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The Teancioft Library 


University of California ¢ Berkeley 


From the library 


of 
JAMES D. HART 


Digitized by the Internet A\ 
in 2008 with funding fro 


bss 


Microsoft Corpore tior 


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oldiers and Civilians — 


BY 
AMBROSE BIERCE 


NEW YORK. 
LOVELL, CORYELL & COMPANY 
310-318 SIXTH AVENUE 


i y & % : 


Copyrighted, 1893, by E. L. G. Steet 


t \ ENIED existence by the chief publishing houses 
-* of the country, this book owes itself to Mr. E. 
eye nes G. STEELE, merchant, of this city. In attesting Mr. 
w Sy Sreete’s faith in his judgment and his friend, it will 


A . B. 


‘y 


oe 

— 
* 
7 


in 
& 


See 


THE TALES BY TITLE. 


SOLDIERS— PAGE. 


A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY 9 
AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE......... 21 
CHICKAMAUGA... 41 
A SON OF THE GODS. BB 
ONE OF THE MISSING 69 
KILLED AT RESACA 93 
THE AFFAIR AT COULTER’S NOTCH 105 
A TOUGH TUSSLE 123 
THE COUP DE GRACE. 139 
PARKER ADDERSON, PHILOSOPHER 151 
CIVILIANS— 
A WATCHER BY THE DEAD 165 
THE MAN AND THE SNAKE 187 
A HOLY TERROR 200 
THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS 227 
AN INHABITANT OF CARCOSA .esessssesssssesssseesesesees 241 
THE BOARDED WINDOW 249 
THE MIDDLE TOE OF THE RIGHT FOOT.........:000 259 
HAITA THE SHEPHERD 277 


AN HEIRESS FROM RED HORSE 289 


* 


ot 


A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY. 


NE sunny afternoon in the autumn of the 

year 1861, a soldier lay in a clump of 
laurel by the side of a road in Western Vir- 
ginia. He lay at full length, upon his stom- 
ach, his feet resting upon the toes, his head 
upon the left forearm. His extended right 
hand loosely grasped his rifle. But for the 
somewhat methodical disposition of his limbs 
and a slight rhythmic movement of the car- 
tridge box at the back of his belt, he might 
have been thought to bedead. He was asleep 
at his post of duty. But if detected he would 
be dead shortly afterward, that being the just 
and legal penalty of his crime. 

The clump of laurel in which the criminal 
Jay was in the angle of a road which, after 
ascending, southward, a steep acclivity to that 
point, turned sharply to the west, running 
along the summit for perhaps one hundred 


(9) 


10 A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY. 


yards. There it turned southward again and 
went zigzagging downward through the forest. 
At the salient of that second angle was a large 
flat rock, jutting out from the ridge to the 
northward, overlooking the deep valley from 
which the road ascended. The rock capped 
a high cliff; a stone dropped from its outer 
edge would have fallen sheer downward one 
thousand feet to the tops of the pines. The 
angle where the soldier lay was on another 
spur of the same cliff. Had he been awake 
he would have commanded a view, not only 
of the short arm of the road and the jutting 
rock but of the entire profile of the cliff below 
it. It might well have made him giddy to 
look. 

The country was wooded everywhere ex- 
cept at the bottom of the valley to the north- 
ward, where there was a small natural meadow, 
through which flowed a stream scarcely visible 
from the valley’s rim. This open ground 
looked hardly larger than an ordinary door- 
yard, but was really several acres in extent. 
Its green was more vivid than that of the in- 
closing forest. Away beyond it rose a line of 
giant cliffs similar to those upon which we are 
supposed to stand in our survey of the savage 
scene, and through which the road had some- 


A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY. II 


how made its climb to the summit. The con- 
figuration of the valley, indeed, was such that 
from our point of observation it seemed en- 
tirely shut in, and one could not but have 
wondered how the road which found a way 
out of it had found a way into it, and whence 
came and whither went the waters of the 
stream that parted the meadow two thousand 
feet below. 3 

No country is so wild and difficult but men 
will make it a theater of war; concealed in the 
forest at the bottom of that military rat trap, 
in which half a hundred men in possession of 
the exits might have starved an army to sub 
mission, lay five regiments of Federal infantry. 
They had marched all the previous day and 
night and were resting. At nightfall they 
would take to the road again, climb to the 
place where their unfaithful sentinel now slept, 
and, descending the other slope of the ridge, 
fall upon a camp of the enemy at about mid- 
night. Their hope was to surprise it, for 
the road lead to the rear of it. In case of 
failure their position would be perilous in the 
extreme; and fail they surely would should 
accident or vigilance apprise the enemy of 
the movement. 

The sleeping sentinel in the clump of laurel 


12 A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY. 


was a young Virginian named Carter Druse. 
He was the son of wealthy parents, an only 
child, and had known such ease and cultiva- 
tion and high living as wealth and taste were 
able to command in the mountain country of 
Western Virginia. His home was but a few 
miles from where he now lay. One morning 
he had risen from the breakfast table and said, 
quietly but gravely: ‘‘ Father, a Union regi- 
ment has arrived at Grafton. I am going to 
join it.” 

The father lifted his leonine head, looked 
at the son a moment in silence, and replied: 
‘‘Go, Carter, and, whatever may occur, do 
what you conceive to be yourduty. Virginia, 
to which you are a traitor, must get on with- 
out you. Should we both live to the end of 
the war, we will speak further of the matter. 
Your mother, as the physician has informed 
you, is ina most critical condition;.at the best 
she cannot be with us longer than a few weeks, 
but that time is precious. It would be better 
not to disturb her.’’ 

So Carter Druse, bowing reverently to his 
father, who returned the salute with a stately 
courtesy which masked a breaking heart, left 
the home of his childhood to go soldiering. 
By conscience and courage, by deeds of de- 


A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY. 13 


votion and daring, he soon commended him- 
self to his fellows and his officers; and it was 
to these qualities and to some knowledge of 
the country that he owed his selection-for his 
present perilous duty at the extreme outpost. 
Nevertheless, fatigue had been stronger than 
resolution, and he had fallen asleep. _What 
good or bad angel came in a dream to rouse 
him from his state of crime who shall say? 
Without a movement, without a sound, in the 
profound silence and the languor of the late 
afternoon, some invisible messenger of fate 
touched with unsealing finger the eyes of his 
consciousness—whispered into the ear of his 
spirit the mysterious awakening word which | 
no human lips have ever spoken, no human 
memory ever has recalled. He quietly raised 
his forehead from his arm and looked between 
the masking stems of the laurels, instinctively 
closing his right hand about the stock of his 
rifle. 

His first feeling was a keen artistic delight. 
On a colossal pedestal, the cliff, motionless at 
the extreme edge of the capping rock and 
sharply outlined against the sky, was an eques- 
trian statue of impressive dignity. The figure 
of the man sat the figure of the horse, straight 
and soldierly, but with the repose of a Grecian 


14 A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY. 


god carved in the marble which limits the 
suggestion of activity. The gray costume 
harmonized with its aerial background; the 
metal of accouterment and caparison was sof- 
tened and subdued by the shadow; the ani- 
mal’s skin had no points of high light. A 
carbine, strikingly foreshortened, lay across 
the pommel of the saddle, kept in place by 
the right hand grasping it at the ‘‘grip’’; the 
left hand, holding the bridle rein, was in- 
visible. In silhouette against the sky, the 
profile of the horse was cut with the sharp- 
ness of a cameo; it looked across the heights 
of air to the confronting cliffs beyond. The 
face of the rider, turned slightly to the left, 
showed only an outline of temple and beard; 
he was looking downward to the bottom of 
the valley. Magnified by its lift against the 
sky and by the soldier’s testifying sense of 
the formidableness of a near enemy, the group 
appeared of heroic, almost colossal, size. 

For an instant Druse had a strange, half- 
defined feeling that he had slept to the end 
of the war and was looking upon a noble 
work of art reared upon that commanding 
eminence to commemorate the deeds of an 
heroic past of which he had been an inglori- 
ous part. The feeling was dispelled by a 


A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY. 15 


slight movement of the group; the horse, 
without moving its feet, had drawn its body 
slightly backward from the verge; the man 
remained immobile as before. Broad awake 
and keenly alive to the significance of the 
situation, Druse now brought the butt of his 
rifle against his cheek by cautiously pushing 
the barrel forward through the bushes, cocked 
the piece, and, glancing through the sights, 
covered a vital spot of the horseman’s breast. 
A touch upon the trigger and all would have 
been well with Carter Druse. At that instant 
the horseman turned his head and looked in 
the direction of his concealed foeman—seemed 
to look into his very face, into his eyes, into 
his brave, compassionate heart. 

Is it, then, so terrible to kill an enemy in 
war—an enemy who has surprised a secret 
vital to the safety of one’s self and comrades— 
an enemy more formidable for his knowledge 
than all his army for its numbers? Carter 
Druse grew deathly pale; he shook in every 
limb, turned faint, and saw the statuesque 
group before him as black figures, rising, 
falling, moving unsteadily in arcs of circles 
in a fiery sky. His hand fell away from his 
weapon, his head slowly dropped until his 
face rested on the leaves in which he lay, 


16 A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY. 


This courageous gentleman and hardy soldier 
was near swooning from intensity of emotion. 

It was not for long; in another moment his 
face was raised from earth, his hands resumed 
their places on the rifle, his forefinger sought 
the trigger; mind, heart, and eyes were clear, 
conscience and reason sound. He could not 
hope to capture that enemy; to alarm him 
would but send him dashing to his camp with 
his fatal news. The duty of the soldier was 
plain: the man must be shot dead from am- 
bush—without warning, without a moment’s 
spiritual preparation, with never so much as 
an unspoken prayer, he must be sent to his 
account. But no—there isa hope; he may 
have discovered nothing—perhaps he is but 
admiring the sublimity of the landscape. If 
permitted he may turn and ride carelessly 
away in the direction whence he came. Surely 
it will be possible to judge at the instant of his 
withdrawing whether he knows. It may well 
be that his fixity of attention—Druse turned 
his head and looked below, through the deeps 
of air downward, as from the surface to the 
bottom of a translucent sea. He saw creep- 
ing across the green meadow a sinuous line 
of figures of men and horses—some foolish 
commander was permitting the soldiers of his 


A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY. 17 


escort to water their beasts in the open, in 
plain view from a hundred summits! 

Druse withdrew his eyes from the valley 
and fixed them again upon the group of man 
and horse in the sky, and again it was through 
the sights of his rifle. But this time his aim 
was at the horse. In-his memory, as if they 
were a divine mandate, rang the words of 
his father at their parting, ‘‘Whatever may 
occur, do what you conceive to be your duty.”’ 
He was calm now. His teeth were firmly but 
not rigidly closed; his nerves were as tranquil 
as a sleep ng babe’s—not a tremor affected 
any muscle of his body; his breathing, until 
suspended in the act of taking aim, was reg- 
ular and slow. Duty had conquered; the 
spirit had said to the body: ‘‘ Peace, be still.”’ 
He fired. 

At that moment an officer of the Federal 
force, who, in a spirit of adventure or in quest 
of knowledge, had left the hidden dzvouac in 
the valley, and, with aimless feet, had made 
his way to the lower edge of a small open 
space near the foot of the cliff, was consider- 
ing what he had to gain by pushing his ex- 
ploration further. At a distance of a quarter 
mile before him, but apparently at a stone’s 
throw, rose from its fringe of pines the gigan- 

2 


18 A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY. 


tic face of rock, towering to so great a height 
above him that it made him giddy to look 
up to where its edge cut a sharp, rugged line 
against the sky. At some distance away to 
his right it presented a clean, vertical profile 
against a background of blue sky to a point 
half of the way down, and of distant hills 
hardly less blue thence to the tops of the trees 
at its base. Lifting his eyes to the dizzy alti- 
tude of its summit, the officer saw an astonish- 
ing sight—a man on horseback riding down 
into the valley through the air! 

Straight upright sat the rider, in military 
fashion, with a firm seat in the saddle, a strong 
clutch upon the rein to hold his charger from 
too impetuous a plunge. From his bare head 
his long hair streamed upward, waving like a 
plume. His right hand was concealed in the . 
cloud of the horse’s lifted mane. The ani- 
mal’s body was as level as if every hoof stroke 
encountered the resistant earth. Its motions 
were those of a wild gallop, but even as the 
officer looked they ceased, with all the legs 
thrown sharply forward as in the act of alight- 
ing from a leap. But this was a flight! 

Filled with amazement and terror by this 
apparition of a horseman in the sky—half be- 
lieving himself the chosen scribe of some new 


A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY. 19 
Apocalypse, the officer was overcome by the 
intensity of his emotions; his legs failed him 
and he fell. Almost at the same instant he 
heard a crashing sound in the trees—a sound 
that died without an echo, and all was still. 

The officer rose to his feet, trembling. The 
familiar sensation of an abraded shin recalled 
his dazed faculties. Pulling himself together, 
he ran rapidly obliquely away from the cliff 
to a point a half-mile from its foot; thereabout 
he expected to find his man; and thereabout 
he naturally failed. In the fleeting instant of 
his vision his imagination had been so wrought 
upon by the apparent grace and ease and in- 
tention of the marvelous performance that it 
did not occur to him that the line of march of 
aerial cavalry is directly downward, and that 
he could find the objects of his search at the 
very foot of the cliff. A half hour later he 
returned to camp. 

This officer was a wise man; he knew better 
than to tell an incredible truth. He said 
nothing of what he had seen. But when the 
commander asked him if in his scout he had 
learned anything of advantage to the expedi- 
tion, he answered:— 

‘Yes, sir; there is no road leading down 
into this valley from the southward.”’ 


20 A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY 


The commander, knowing better, smiled. 

Aiter firing his shot private Carter Druse 
reloaded his rifle and resumed his watch. 
Ten minutes had hardly passed when a Fed- 
eral sergeant crept cautiously to him on hands 
and knees. Druse neither turned his head 
nor looked at him, but lay without motion or 
sign of recognition. 

‘‘Did you fire?’’ the sergeant ‘whispered. 

ah Bex 

‘© At what?”’ 

‘‘A horse. It was standing on yonder rock 
—pretty far out. You see it is no longer 
there. It went over the cliff.” 

The man’s face was white but he showed 
no other sign of emotion. Having answered, 
he turned away his face and said no more. 
The sergeant did not understand. 

‘*See here, Druse,’’ he said, after a mo- 
ment’s silence, ‘‘it’s no use making a mys- 
tery. I order you to report. Was there 
anybody on the horse?” == 

Yes.” 

“Who?” 

‘*My father.”’ 

The sergeant rose to his feet and walked 
away. ‘‘Good God!”’ he said. 


AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK 
BRIDGE. 


I. 

A MAN stood upon a railroad bridge in. 

Northern Alabama, looking down into 
the swift waters twenty feet below. The man’s 
hands were behind his back, the wrists bound 
with a cord. A rope loosely encircled his 
neck. It was attached to a stout cross-timber 
above his head, and the slack fell to the level 
of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon 
the sleepers supporting the metals of the rail- 
way supplied a footing for him, and his exe- 
cutioners—two private soldiers of the Federal 
army, directed by a sergeant, who in civil life 
may have been a deputy sheriff. Ata short 
remove upon the same temporary platform 
was an officer in the uniform of his rank, 
armed. He was a captain. A sentinel at 
each end of the bridge stood with his rifle in 
the position known as ‘‘support,’’ that is to 
say, vertical in front of the left shoulder, the 


(21) 


22 AN OCCURRENCE 


hammer resting on the forearm thrown 
straight across the chest—a formal and un- 
natural position, enforcing an erect carriage 
of the body. It did not appear to be the 
_ duty of these two men to know what was 
occurring at the center of the bridge; they 
merely blockaded the two ends of the foot 
plank which traversed it. 

Beyond one of the sentinels nobody was in 
sight; the railroad ran straight away into a 
forest for a hundred yards, then, curving, was 
lost to view. Doubtless there was an outpost 
further along. The other bank of the stream 
was open ground—a gentle acclivity crowned 
with a stockade of vertical tree trunks, loop- 
holed for rifles, with a single embrasure | 
through which protruded the. muzzle of a 
brass cannon commanding the bridge. Mid- 
way of the slope between bridge and fort 
were the spectators—a single company of 
infantry in line, at ‘‘parade rest,’’ the butts 
of the rifles on the ground, the barrels in- 
clining slightly backward against the right 
shoulder, the hands crossed upon the stock. 
A lieutenant stood at the right of the line, the 
point of his sword upon the ground, his left 
hand resting upon his right. Excepting the 
group of four at the center of the bridge nota 


AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE. 23 


man moved. The company faced the bridge, 
staring stonily, motionless. The sentinels, 
facing the banks of the stream, might have 
been statues to adorn the bridge. The cap- 
tain stood with folded arms, silent, observing 
the work of his subordinates but making no 
sign. Death is a dignitary who, when he 
comes announced, is to be received with 
formal manifestations of respect, even by 
those most familiar with him. In the code 
of military etiquette silence and fixity are 
_ forms of deference. 

The man who was engaged in being hanged 
was apparently about thirty-five years of age. 
He was a civilian, if one might judge from his 
dress, which was that of a planter. His fea- 
tures were good—a straight nose, firm mouth, 
broad forehead, from which his long, dark hair 
was combed straight back, falling behind his 
ears to the collar of his well-fitting frock coat. 
He wore a mustache and pointed beard but 
no whiskers; his eyes were large and dark 
gray and had a kindly expression which one 
would hardly have expected in one whose 
neck was in the hemp. Evidently this was 
no vulgar assassin. The liberal military code 
makes provision for hanging many kinds of 
people, and gentlemen are not excluded, 


24 AN OCCURRENCE 


The preparations being complete, the two 
private soldiers stepped aside and each drew 
away the plank upon which he had been stand- 
ing. The sergeant turned to the captain, 
saluted and placed himself immediately be- 
hind that officer, who in turn moved apart 
one pace. These movements left the con- 
demned man and the sergeant standing on the 
two ends of the same plank, which spanned 
three of the cross-ties of the bridge. The 
end upon which the civilian stood almost, but 
not quite, reached a fourth. This plank had 
been held in place by the weight of the cap- 
tain; it was now held by that of the sergeant. 
At a signal from the former, the latter would 
step aside, the plank would tilt and the con- 
demned man go down between two ties. The 
arrangement commended itself to his judg- 
ment as simple and effective. His face had 
not been covered nor his eyes bandaged. He 
looked a moment at his ‘‘unsteadfast footing,”’ 
then let his gaze wander to the swirling water 
of the stream racing madly beneath his feet. 
A piece of dancing driftwood caught his at- 
tention and his eyes followed it down the 
current. How slowly it appeared to move! 
What a sluggish stream! 

He closed his eyes in order to fix his last 


AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE. 25 


thoughts upon his wife and children. The 
water, touched to gold by the early sun, the 
brooding mists under the banks at some dis- 
tance down the stream, the fort, the soldiers, 
the piece of drift—all had distracted him. 
And now he became conscious of a-new dis- 
turbance. Striking through the thought of 
his dear ones was a sound which he could 
neither ignore nor understand, a sharp, dis- 
tinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of a 
blacksmith’s hammer upon the anvil; it had 
the same ringing quality. He wondered 
what it was, and whether immeasurably dis- 
tant or near by—it seemed both. Its recur- 
rence was regular, but as slow as the tolling 
ofa death knell. He awaited each stroke with 
impatience and—he knew not why—appre- 
hension. The intervals of silence grew pro- 
gressively longer; the delays became mad- 
dening. With their greater infrequency the 
sounds increased in strength and sharpness. 
They hurt his ear like the thrust of a knife; 
he feared he would shriek. What he heard 
was the ticking of his watch. 

He unclosed his eyes and saw again the 
water belowhim. ‘‘IfI could free my hands,” 
he thought, ‘‘I might throw off the noose 
and spring into the stream. By diving I 


26 AN OCCURRENCE 


could evade the bullets, and, swimming vigor- 
ously, reach the bank, take to the woods, and 
get away home. My home, thank God, is 
as yet outside their lines; my wife and little 
ones are still beyond the invader’s farthest 
advance.”’ 

As these thoughts, which have here to be 
set down in words, were flashed into the 
doomed man’s brain rather than evolved from 
it, the captain nodded to the sergeant. The 
sergeant stepped aside. 


II. 


Peyton Farquhar was a well-to-do planter, 
of an old and highly-respected Alabama fam- 
ily. Being a slave owner, and, like other 
slave owners, a politician, he was naturally 
an original secessionist and ardently devoted 
to the Southern cause. Circumstances of an 
imperious nature which it is unnecessary to 
relate here, had prevented him from taking 
service with the gallant army which ~had 
fought the disastrous campaigns ending with 
the fall of Corinth, and he chafed under the 
inglorious restraint, longing for the release of 
his energies, the larger life of the soldier, the 
opportunity for distinction. That opportu- 
nity, he felt, would come, as it comes to all in 


—— 


a ie 


AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE. 27 


war time. Meanwhile he did what he could. 
No service was too humble for him to perform 
in aid of the South, no adventure too perilous 
for him to undertake if consistent with the 
character of a civilian who was at heart a 
soldier, and who in good faith and without 
too much qualification assented to at least a 
part of the frankly villainous dictum that all 
is fair in love and war. 

One evening while Farquhar and his wife 
were sitting on a rustic bench near the en- 
trance to his grounds, a gray-clad soldier 
rode up to the gate and asked fora drink of 
water. Mrs. Farquhar was only too happy to 
serve him with her own white hands. While 
she was gone to fetch the water, her husband 
approached the dusty horseman and inquired 
eagerly for news from the front. 

“The Yanks are repairing the railroads,”’ 
said the man, ‘‘and are getting ready for an- 
other advance. They have reached the Owl 
Creek bridge, put it in order, and built a 
stockade on the other bank. The comman- 
dant has issued an order, which is posted 
everywhere, declaring that any civilian caught 
interfering with the railroad, its bridges, tun- 
nels, or trains, will be summarily hanged. I 
saw the order,”’ 


28 AN OCCURRENCE 


‘*How far is it to the Owl Creek bridge?”’ 
Farquhar asked. 

‘‘About thirty miles?’’ 

‘*Is there no force on this side the creek?’’ 

‘*Only a picket post half a mile out, on the 
railroad, and a single sentinel at this end of 
the bridge.’’ 

‘‘ Suppose a man—a civilian and student of 
hanging—should elude the picket post and 
perhaps get the better of the sentinel,’’ said 
_ Farquhar, smiling, ‘‘what could he accom- 
plish?”’ 

The soldier reflected. ‘‘I was there a 
month ago,”’ he replied. ‘‘I observed that 
the flood of last winter had lodged a great 
quantity of driftwood against the wooden pier 
at this end of the bridge. It is now dry and 
would burn like tow.”’ 

The lady had now brought the water, which 
the soldier drank. He thanked her ceremo- 
niously , bowed to her husband, and rode away, 
An hour later, after nightfall, he repassed the 
plantation, going northward in the direction 
from which he had come. He wasa Federal 


scout. 
Ill. 


As Peyton Farquhar fell straight downward 
through the bridge, he lost consciousness and ( 


AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE: 29 


was as one already dead. From this state he 
was awakened—ages later, it seemed to him— 
by the pain of a sharp pressure upon his 
throat, followed by a sense of suffocation. 
Keen, poignant agonies seemed to shoot from 
his neck downward through every fiber of 
his body and limbs. These pains appeared 
to flash along well-defined lines of ramifica- 
tion and to beat with an inconceivably rapid 
periodicity. They seemed like streams of 
pulsating fire heating him to an intolerable | 
temperature. As to his head, he was con- 
scious of nothing but a feeling of fullness— 
of congestion. These sensations were unac- 
companied bythought. The intellectual part 
of his nature was already effaced; he had 
power only to feel, and feeling was torment. 
He was conscious of motion. Encompassed 
in a luminous cloud, of which he was now 
merely the fiery heart, without material sub- 
stance, he swung through unthinkable arcs 
of oscillation, like a vast pendulum. Then 
all at once, with terrible suddenness, the light 
about him shot upward with the noise of a 
loud plash; a frightful roaring was in his ears, 
and all was cold and dark. The power of 
thought was restored; he knew that the rope 
had broken and he had fallen into the stream, 


30 - AN OCCURRENCE 


There was no additional strangulation; the 
noose about his neck was already suffocating 
him and kept the water from his lungs. To 
die of hanging at the bottom of ariver!—the 
idea seemed to him ludicrous. He opened 
his eyes in the blackness and saw above him 
a gleam of light, but how distant, how inac- 
cessible! He was still sinking, for the light 
became fainter and fainter until it was a 
mere glimmer. Then it began to grow and 
brighten, and he knew that he was rising to- 
ward the surface— knew it with reluctance, for 
he was now very comfortable. ‘‘To be 
hanged and drowned,”’ he thought, ‘‘that is 
not so bad; but I do not wish to be shot. 
No; I will not be shot; that is not fair.’’ 

He was not conscious of an effort, but a 
sharp pain in his wrists apprised him that he 
was trying to free his hands. He gave the 
struggle his attention, as an idler might ob- 
serve the feat of a juggler, without interest in 
the outcome. What splendid effort!—what 
magnificent, what superhuman strength! Ah, 
that was a fine endeavor! Bravo! The cord 
fellaway; his arms parted and floated upward, 
the hands dimly seen on each side in the 
growing light. He watched them with a new 
interest as first one and then the other 


AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE. 31 


pounced upon the noose at his neck. They 
tore it away and thrust it fiercely aside, its 
undulations resembling those of a water snake. 
‘*Put it back, put it back!’’ He thought he 
shouted these words to his hands, for the un- 
doing of the noose had been succeeded by the 
direst pang which he had yet experienced. 
His neck ached horribly; his brain was on 
fire; his heart, which had been fluttering faintly, 
gave a great leap, trying to force itself out at 
his mouth. His whole body was racked and 
wrenched with an insupportable anguish! But 
his disobedient hands gave no heed to the 
command. They beat the water vigorously 
with quick, downward strokes, forcing him to 
the surface. He felt his head emerge; his 
eyes were blinded by the sunlight; his chest 
expanded convulsively, and with a supreme 
and crowning agony his lungs engulfed a 
’ great draught of air, which instantly he ex- 
pelled in a shriek! 

He was now in full possession of his phys- 
ical senses. They were, indeed, preternatu- 
rally keen and alert. Something in the awful 
disturbance of his organic system had so ex- 
alted and refined them that they made record 
of things never before perceived. He felt the 
ripples upon his face and heard their separate 


32 AN OCCURRENCE 


sounds as they struck. He looked at the for- 
est on the bank of the stream, saw the indi- 
vidual trees, the leaves and the veining of each 
leaf—saw the very insects upon them, the 
locusts, the brilliant-bodied flies, the gray spi- 
ders stretching their webs from twig to twig. 
He noted the prismatic colors in all the dew- 
drops upon a million blades of grass. The 
humming of the gnats that danced above the 
eddies of the stream, the beating of the 
dragon flies’ wings, the strokes of the water 
spiders’ legs, like oars which had lifted their 
boat—all these made audible music. A fish 
slid along beneath his eyes and he heard the 
rush of its body parting the water. 

He had come to the surface facing down 
the stream; in a moment the visible world 
seemed to wheel slowly round, himself the 
pivotal point, and he saw the bridge, the fort, 
the soldiers upon the bridge, the captain, 
the sergeant, the two privates, his execution- 
ers. They were in silhouette against the blue 
sky. They shouted and gesticulated, point- 
ing at him; the captain had drawn his pistol, 
but did not fire; the others were unarmed. 
Their movements were grotesque and horrible, 
their forms gigantic. 

Suddenly he heard a sharp report and 


AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE. 33 


something struck the water smartly within a 
few inches of his head, spattering his face 
with spray. He heard a second report, and 
saw one of the sentinels with his rifle at 
his shoulder, a light cloud of blue smoke ris- 
ing from the muzzle. The man in the water 
saw the eye of the man on the bridge gazing 
into his own through the sights of the rifle. 
He observed that it was a gray eye, and re- 
membered having read that gray eyes were 
keenest and that all famous marksmen had 
them. Nevertheless, this one had missed. 

A counter swirl had caught Farquhar and 
turned him half round; he was again looking 
into the forest on the bank opposite the fort. 
The sound of a clear, high voice ina monoto- 
nous singsong now rang out behind him 
and came across the water with a distinctness 
that pierced and subdued all other sounds, 
even the beating of the ripples in his ears. 
Although no soldier, he had frequented 
camps enough to know the dread significance 
of that deliberate, drawling, aspirated chant; 
the lieutenant on shore was taking a part in 
the morning’s work. How coldly and piti- 
lessly—with what an even, calm intonation, 
presaging and enforcing tranquillity in the 
men—with what accurately-measured inter- 
vals fell those cruel words: 

3 


44 AN OCCURRENCE 


‘‘Attention, company. . . . Shoulder 
arms... ss Ready, >.>.) }- ARM 
Fire.”’ 


Farquhar dived—dived as deeply as he 
could. The water roared in his ears like the 
voice of Niagara, yet he heard the dulled 
thunder of the volley, and, rising again to- 
ward the surface, met shining bits of metal, 
singularly flattened, oscillating slowly down- 
ward. Some of them touched him on the 
face and hands, then fell away, continuing 
their descent. One lodged between his col- 
lar and neck; it was uncomfortably warm, and 
he snatched it out. 

As he rose to the surface, gasping for 
breath, he saw that he had been a long time 
under water; he was perceptibly farther 
down stream—nearer to safety. The soldiers 
had almost finished reloading; the metal 
ramrods flashed all at once in the sunshine as 
they were drawn from the barrels, turned in 
the air, and thrust into their sockets. The 
two sentinels fired again, independently and 
ineffectually. 

The hunted man saw all this over his shoul- 
der; he was now swimming vigorously with 
the current. His brain was as energetic as his 
arms and legs; he thought with the rapidity 
of lightning. 


AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE, 35 


“‘The officer,’? he reasoned, ‘‘will not 
make that martinet’s error a second time. 
It is as easy to dodge a volley as a single 
shot. He has probably already given the 
command to fire at will. God help me, I 
cannot dodge them all!”’ 

An appalling plash within two yards of 
him, followed by a loud rushing sound, dim- 
_tnuendo, which seemed to travel back through 
the air to the fort and died in an explosion 
which stirred the very river to its deeps! A 
rising sheet of water, which curved over him, 
fell down upon him, blinded him, strangled 
him! The cannon had taken a hand in the 
game. As he shook his head free from the 
commotion of the smitten water, he heard the 
deflected shot humming through the air 
ahead, and in an instant it was cracking and 
smashing the branches in the forest beyond. 

‘They will not do that again,’’ he thought; 
‘‘the next time they will use a charge of grape. 
I must keep my eye upon the gun; the 
smoke will apprise me—the report arrives too 
late; it lags behind the missile. It is a good 
gun.”’ 

Suddenly he felt himself whirled round 
and round—spinning like atop. The water, 
the banks, the forest, the now distant bridge, 


36 AN OCCURRENCE 


fort and men—all were commingled and 
blurred. Objects were represented by their 
colors only; circular horizontal streaks of 
color—that was all he saw. He had been 
caught in a vortex and was being whirled on 
with a velocity of advance and gyration which 
made him giddy and sick. Ina few moments 
he was flung upon the gravel at the foot of 
the left bank of the stream—the southern 
bank—and behind a projecting point which 
concealed him from his enemies. The sud- 
den arrest of his motion, the abrasion of one 
of his hands on the gravel, restored him 
and he wept with delight. He dug his fin- 
gers into the sand, threw it over himself in 
handfuls and audibly blessed it. It looked 
like gold, like diamonds, rubies, emeralds; 
he could think of nothing beautiful which 
it did not resemble. The trees upon the 
bank were giant garden plants; he noted a 
definite order in their arrangement, inhaled 
the fragrance of their blooms. A strange, 
roseate light shone through the spaces among 
their trunks, and the wind made in their 
branches the music of zolian harps. He 
had no wish to perfect his escape, was con- 
tent to remain in that enchanting spot until 
retaken. 


AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE. 37 


A whizz and rattle of grapeshot among the 
branches high above his head roused him 
from his dream. The baffled cannoneer had 
fired him a random farewell. He sprang to 
his feet, rushed up the sloping bank, and 
plunged into the forest. 

All that day he traveled, laying his course 
by the rounding sun. The forest seemed in- 
terminable; nowhere did he discover a break 
in it, not even a woodman’s road. He had 
not known that he lived in so wild a region. 
There was something uncanny in the revela- 
tion. 

By nightfall he was fatigued, footsore, fam- 
ishing. The thought of his wife and children 
urged him on. At last he found a road which 
led him in what he knew to be the right di- 
rection. It was as wide and straight as a city 
street, yet it seemed untraveled. No fields 
bordered it, no dwelling anywhere. Not so 
much as the barking of a dog suggested hu- 
man habitation. The black bodies of the 
great trees formed a straight wall on both 
sides, terminating on the horizon in a point, 
like a diagram in a lesson in perspective. 
Overhead, as he looked up through this rift 
in the wood, shone great golden stars looking 
unfamiliar and grouped in strange constella- 


38 AN OCCURRENCE 


tions. He was sure they were arranged in 
some order which had a secret and malign 
significance. The wood on either side was 
full of singular noises, among which—once, 
twice, and again—he distinctly heard whispers 
in an unknown tongue. 

His neck was in pain, and, lifting his hand 
to it, he found it horribly swollen. He knew 
that it had a circle of black where the rope 
had bruised it. His eyes felt congested; he 
could no longer close them. His tongue was 
swollen with thirst; he relieved its fever by 
thrusting it forward from between his teeth 
into the cool air. How softly the turf had 
carpeted the untraveled avenue! He could 
no longer feel the roadway beneath his feet! 

Doubtless, despite his suffering, he fell 
asleep while walking, for now he sees another 
scene—perhaps he has merely recovered 
froma delirium. He stands at the gate of 
his own home. All is as he | ft it, and all 
bright and beautiful in the morning sunshine. 
He must have traveled the entire night. As 
he pushes open the gate and passes up the 
wide white walk, he sees a flutter of female 
garments; his wife, looking fresh and cool and 
sweet, steps down from the veranda to meet 
him. At the bottom of the steps she stands 


AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE. 39 


waiting, with a smile of ineffable joy, an atti- 
tude of matchless grace and dignity. Ah, 
how beautiful she is! He springs forward with 
extended arms. As he is about to clasp her, 
he feels a stunning blow upon the back of the 
neck; a blinding white light blazes all about 
him, with a sound like the shock of a cannon 
—then all is darkness and silence! 

Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with 
a broken neck, swung gently from side to 
side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek 
bridge. 


CHICKAMAUGA. 


QE sunny autumn afternoon a child 
strayed away from its rude home in a 
small field and entered a forest unobserved. 
It was happy in a new sense of freedom from 
control—happy in the opportunity of explora- 
tion and adventure; for this child’s spirit, in 
bodies of its ancestors, had for many thousands 
of years been trained to memorable feats of 
discovery and conquest—victories in battles 
whose critical moments were centuries, whose 
victors’ camps were cities of hewn stone. 
From the cradle of its race it had conquered 
its way through two continents, and, passing 
a great sea, had penetrated a third, there to 
be born to war and dominance as a heritage. 
The child was a boy, aged about six years, 
the son of a poor planter. In his younger 
manhood the father had been a soldier, had 
fought against naked savages, and followed the 
flag of his country into the capital of a civil- 
(41) 


42 CHICKAMAUGA. 


ized race to the far South. In the peaceful 
life of a planter the warrior-fire survived; once 
kindled it is never extinguished. The man 
loved military books and pictures, and the 
boy had understood enough to make himself 
a wooden sword, though e:en the eye of his 
father would hardly have known it for what 
it was. This weapon he now bore bravely, as 
became the son of an heroic race, and, pausing 
now and again in the sunny spaces of the for- 
est, assumed, with some exaggeration, the 
postures of aggression and defense that he 
had been taught by the engraver’s art. Made 
reckless by the ease with which he overcame 
invisible foes attempting to stay his advance, 
he committed the common enough military 
error of pushing the pursuit to a dangerous 
extreme, until he found himself upon the 
margin of a wide but shallow brook, whose 
rapid waters barred his direct advance against 
the flying foe who had crossed with illogical 
ease. But the intrepid victor was not to be 
baffled; the spirit of the race which had 
passed the great sea burned unconquerable in 
that small breast and would not be denied. 
Finding a place where some bowlders in the 
bed of the stream lay but a step or a leap 
apart, he made his way across and fell again 


oS 


CHICKAMAUGA, 43 


upon the rear guard of his imaginary foe, 
putting all to the sword. 

Now that the battle had been won, pru- 
dence required that he withdraw to his base 
of operations. Alas! like many a mightier 
conquerer, and like one, the mightiest, he 
could not 

curb the lust for war, 
Nor learn that tempted Fate will leave the loftiest 
star. 

Advancing from the bank of the creek, he 
suddenly found himself confronted with a 
new and more formidable enemy; in the path 
that he was following, bolt upright, with ears 
erect and paws suspended before it, sat a rab- 
bit. With a startled cry the child turned and 
fled, he knew not in what direction, calling 
with inarticulate cries for his mother, weep- 
ing, stumbling, his tender skin cruelly torn 
by brambles, his little heart beating hard with 
terror—breathless, blind with tears—lost in 
the forest! Then, for more than an hour, he 
wandered with erring feet through the tan- 
gled undergrowth, till at last, overcome with 
fatigue, he lay down in a narrow space be- 
tween two rocks, within a few yards of the 
stream, and, still grasping his toy sword, no 
longer a weapon but a companion, sobbed 


44 CHICKAMAUGA, 


himself to sleep. The wood birds sang mer- 
rily above his head; the squirrels, whisking 
their bravery of tail, ran barking from tree to 
_ tree, unconscious of the pity of it, and some- 
‘where far away was a strange, muffled thun- 
der, as if the partridges were drumming in 
celebration of nature’s victory over the son 
of her immemorial enslavers. And back at 
the little plantation, where white men and 
black were hastily searching the fields and 
hedgerows in alarm, a mother’s heart was 
breaking for her missing child. 

Hours passed, and then the little sleeper 
rose to his feet. The chill of the evening was 
in his limbs, the fear of the gloom in his 
heart. But he had rested, and he no longer 
wept. With some blind instinct which im- 
pelled to action, he struggled through the 
undergrowth about him and came to a more 
open ground—on his right the brook, to the 
left a gentle acclivity studded with infrequent 
trees; over all the gathering gloom of twi- 
light. A thin, ghostly mist rose along the 
water. It frightened and repelled him; in- 
stead of recrossing, in the direction whence 
he had come, he turned his back upon it and 
went forward toward the dark  inclosing 
wood. Suddenly he saw before him a 


CHICKAMAUGA. 48 


strange moving object which he took to be 
some large animal—a dog, a pig—he could 
not name it; perhaps it was a bear. He 
had seen pictures of bears, but knew of nothing 
to their discredit, and had vaguely wished to 
meet one. But something in form or move- 
ment of this object—something in the awk. 
wardness of its approach—told him that it was 
not a bear, and curiosity was stayed by fear. 
He stood still, and as it came slowly on, 
gained courage every moment, for he saw 
that at least it had not the long, menacing 
ears of the rabbit. Possibly his impression- 
able mind was half conscious of something 
familiar in its shambling, awkward gait. Be- 
fore it had approached near enough to resolve 
his doubts, he saw that it was followed by an- 
other and another. To right and to left 
were many more; the whole open space about 
him was alive with them—all moving forward 
toward the brook. 

They were men. They crept upon their 
hands and knees. They used their hands 
only, dragging their legs. They used their 
knees only, their arms hanging useless at 
their sides. They strove to rise to their feet, 
but fell prone in the attempt. They did noth- 
ing naturally, and nothing alike, save only to 


46 CHICKAMAUGA. 


advance foot by foot in the same direction. 
Singly, in pairs, and in little groups, they 
came on through the gloom, some halting 
now and again while others crept slowly 
past them, then resuming their movement. 
They came by dozens and by hundreds; as 
far on either hand as one could see in the 
deepening gloom they extended, and the 
black wood behind them appeared to be in- 
exhaustible. The very ground seemed in 
motion toward the creek. Occasionally one 
who had paused did not again go on, but lay 
motionless. He was dead. Some, pausing, 
made strange gestures with their hands, 
erected their arms and lowered them again, 
clasped their heads; spread their palms up- 
ward, as men are sometimes seen to do in 
public prayer. 

Not all of this did the child note; it is what 
would have been noted by an older observer; 
he saw little but that these were men, yet 
crept like babes. Being men, they were not 
terrible, though some of them were unfamil- 
iarly clad. He moved among them freely, 
going from one to another and peering into 
their faces with childish curiosity. All their 
faces were singularly white and many were 
streaked and gouted with red. Something in 


CHICKAMAUGA. A7 


this—something too, perhaps, in their gro- 
tesque attitudes and movements— eminded 
him of the painted clown whom he had seen 
last summer in the circus, and he laughed as 
he watched them. But on and ever on they 
crept, these maimed and bleeding men, as 
heedless as he of the dramatic contrast be- 
tween his laughter and their own ghastly 
gravity. To him it was a merry spectacle. 
He had seen his father’s negroes creep upon 
their hands and knees for his amusement— 
had ridden them so, ‘‘making believe’ they | 
were his horses. He now approached one of 
these crawling figures from behind and with 
an agile movement mounted it astride. The 
man sank upon his breast, recovered, flung 
the small boy fiercely to the ground as an un- 
broken colt might have done, then turned 
upon him a face that lacked a lower jaw— 
from the upper teeth to the throat was a great 
red gap fringed with hanging shreds of flesh 
and splinters of bone. The unnatural prom-: 
inence of nose, the absence of chin, the 
fierce eyes, gave this man the appearance of 
a great bird of prey crimsoned in throat and 
breast by the blood of its quarry. The man 
rose to his knees, the child to his feet. The 
man shook his fist at the child; the child, 


48 CHICKAMAUGA. 


terrified at last, ran to a tree near by, got 
upon the farther side of it, and took a more 
serious view of the situation. And so the 
uncanny multitude dragged itself slowly and 
painfully along in hideous pantomime— 
moved forward down the slope like a swarm 
of great black beetles, with never a sound of 
going—in silence profound, absolute. 
Instead of darkening, the haunted land- 
scape began to brighten. Through the belt 
of trees beyond the brook shone a strange 
red light, the trunks and branches of the 
trees making a black lacework against it. 
It struck the creeping figures and gave them 
monstrous shadows, which caricatured their 
movements on the lit grass. It fell upon 
their faces, touching their whiteness with 
a ruddy tinge, accentuating the stains with 
which so many of them were freaked and 
maculated. It sparkled on buttons and bits 
of metal in their clothing. Instinctively the 
child turned toward the growing splendor 
and moved down the slope with his horrible 
companions; in a few moments had passed 
the foremost of the throng—not much of a 
feat, considering his advantages. He placed 
himself in the lead, his wooden sword still in 
hand, and solemnly directed the march, con- 


CHICKAMAUGA. 49 


forming his pace to theirs and occasionally 
turning as if to see that his forces did not 
straggle. Surely such a leader never before 
had such a following. 

Scattered about upon the ground ‘now 
slowly narrowing by the encroachment of 
this awful march to water, were certain arti- 
cles to which, in the leader’s mind, were 
coupled no significant associations; an oc- 
casional blanket, tightly rolled lengthwise, 
doubled and the ends bound together with a 
string; a heavy knapsack here, and there a 
broken musket—such things, in short, as are 
found in the rear of retreating troops, the 
“‘spoor’’ of men flying from their hunters. 
Everywhere near the creek, which here had 
a margin of lowland, the earth was trodden 
into mud by the feet of men and horses. An 
observer of better experience in the use of 
his eyes would have noticed that these foot- 
prints pointed in both directions; the ground 
had been twice passed over—in advance and 
in retreat. A few hours before, these desper- 
ate, stricken men, with their more fortunate 
and now distant comrades, had penetrated 
the forest in thousands. Their successive 
battalions, breaking into swarms and reform- 


ing in lines, had passed the child on every 
4 


50 CHICKAMAUGA. 


side—had almost trodden on him as he slept. 
The rustle and murmur of their march had 
not awakened him. Almost within a stone’s 
throw of where he lay they had fought a 
battle; but all unheard by him were the roar 
of the musketry, the shock of the cannon, 
‘‘the thunder of the captains and the shout- 
ing.’’ He had slept through it all, grasping 
his little wooden sword with perhaps a tighter 
clutch in unconscious sympathy with his 
martial environment, but as heedless of the 
grandeur of the struggle as the dead who 
died to make the glory. 

The fire beyond the belt of woods on the 
farther side of the creek, reflected to earth 
from the canopy of its own smoke, was now 
suffusing the whole landscape. It trans- 
formed the sinuous line of mist to the vapor 
of gold. The water gleamed with dashes of 
red, and red, too, were many of the stones 
protruding above the surface. But that was 
blood; the less desperately wounded had 
stained them in crossing. On them, too, 
the child now crossed with eager steps; he 
was going to the fire. As he stood upon the 
farther bank, he turned about to look at the 
companions of his march. The advance was 
arriving at the creek. The stronger had al- 


CHICKAMAUGA. 5I 


ready drawn themselves to the brink and 
plunged their faces in the flood. Three or 
four who lay without motion appeared to 
have no heads. At this the child’s eyes ex- 
panded with wonder; even his hospitable un- 
derstanding could not accept a phenomenon 
implying such vitality as that. After slaking 
their thirst these men had not the strength 
to back away from the water, nor to keep 
their heads above it. They were drowned. 
In rear of these the open spaces of the forest 
showed the leader as many formless figures 
of his grim command as at first; but not 
nearly so many were in motion. He waved 
his cap for their encouragement and smilingly 
pointed with his weapon in the direction of 
the guiding light—a pillar of fire to this 
strange exodus. 

Confident of the fidelity of his forces, he 
now entered the belt of woods, passed through 
it easily in the red illumination, climbed a 
fence, ran across a field, turning now and 
again to coquette with his responsive shadow, 
and so approached the blazing ruin of a 
dwelling. Desolation everywhere. In all 
the wide glare not a living thing was visible. 
He cared nothing for that; the spectacle 
pleased, and he danced with glee in imita- 


ye CHICKAMAUGA. 


tion of the wavering flames. He ran about 
collecting fuel, but every object that he found 
was too heavy for him to cast in from the 
distance to which the heat limited his ap- 
proach. In despair he flung in his sword—a 
surrender to the superior forces of nature. 
His military career was at an end. 

Shifting his position, his eyes fell upon 
some outbuildings which had an oddly famil- 
iar appearance, as if he had dreamed of them. 
He stood considering them with wonder, 
when suddenly the entire plantation, with its 
inclosing forest, seemed to turn as if upona 
pivot. His little world swung half around; 
the points of the compass were reversed. 
He recognized the blazing building as his 
own home! . 

For a moment he stood stupefied by the 
power of the revelation, then ran with stum- 
bling feet, making a half circuit of the ruin. 
There, conspicuous in the light of the con- 
flagration, lay the dead body of a woman— 
the white face turned upward, the hands 
thrown out and clutched full of grass, the 
clothing deranged, the long dark hair in 
tangles and full of clotted blood. The greater 
part of the forehead was torn away, and from 
the jagged hole the brain protruded, over- 


CHICKAMAUGA. 53 


flowing the temple, a frothy mass of gray, 
crowned with clusters of crimson bubbles— 
the work of a shell! 

The child moved his little hands, making 
wild, uncertain gestures. He uttered a series 
of inarticulate and indescribable cries—some- 
thing between the chattering of an ape and 
the gobbling of a turkey—a startling, soul- 
less, unholy sound, the language of a devil. 
The child was a deaf mute. 

Then he stood motionless, with quivering 
lips, looking down upon the wreck. 


A SON OF THE GODS. 


A STUDY IN THE HISTORICAL PRESENT TENSE. 


A BREEZY day and a sunny landscape. 

An open country to right and left and 
forward; behind, a wood. In the edge of this 
wood, facing the open but not venturing into 
it, long lines of troops halted.- The wood is 
alive with them, and full of confused noises 
—the occasional rattle of wheels as a battery 
of artillery gets into position to cover the ad- 
vance; the hum and murmur of the soldiers 
talking; a sound of innumerable feet in the 
dry leaves that strew the interspaces among 
the trees; hoarse commands of officers. De- 
tached groups of horsemen are well in front 
—not altogether exposed—many of them in- 
tently regarding the crest of a hill a mile 
away in the direction of the interrupted ad- 
vance. For this powerful army, moving in 
battle order through a forest, has met with a 
formidable obstacle—the open country. The 


(55) 


56 A SON OF THE GODS, 


crest of that gentle hill a mile away has a 
sinister look; itsays, Beware! Along it runs 
a stone wall extending to left and right a 
great distance. Behind the wall is a hedge; 
behind the hedge are seen the tops of trees 
in rather straggling order. Behind the trees 
—what? It is necessary to know. 

Yesterday, and for many days and nights 
previously, we were fighting somewhere; 
always there was cannonading, with occa- 
sional keen rattlings of musketry, mingled 
with cheers, our own or the enemy’s, we 
seldom knew, attesting some temporary ad- 
vantage. This morning at daybreak the en- 
emy was gone. We have moved forward 
across his earthworks, across which we have 
so often vainly attempted to move before, 
through the débris of his abandoned camps, 
among the graves of his fallen, into the 
woods beyond. * 

How curiously we regarded *everything! 
how odd it all seemed! Nothing appeared 
guite familiar; the most commonplace ob- 
jects—an old saddle, a splintered wheel, a 
forgotten canteen—everything related some- 
thing of the mysterious personality of those 
strange men who had been killing us. The 
soldier never becomes wholly familiar with 


A SON OF THE GODS. 57 


the conception of his foes as men like him- 
self; he cannot divest himself of the feeling 
that they are another order of beings, differ- 
ently conditioned, in an environment not al- 
together of the earth. The smallest vestiges 
of them rivet his attention and engage his 
interest. He thinks of them as inaccessible; 
and, catching an unexpected glimpse of them, 
they appear farther away, and therefore larger 
than they really are—like objects in a fog. 
He is somewhat in awe of them. 

From the edge of the wood leading up the 
acclivity are the tracks of horses and wheels— 
the wheels of cannon. The yellow grass is 
beaten down by the feet of infantry. Clearly 
they have passed this way in thousands; they 
have not withdrawn by the country roads. 
This is significant—it is the difference be- 
tween retiring and retreating. 

That group of horsemen is our com- 
mander, his staff and escort. He is facing the 
distant crest, holding his field glass against 
his eyes with both hands, his elbows need- 
lessly elevated; it is a fashion; it seems to 
dignify the act; we are all addicted to it. 
Suddenly he lowers the glass and says a few 
words to those about him. Two or three 
aides detach themselves from the group and 


58 A SON OF THE GODS. 


canter away into the woods, along the lines 
in each direction. We did not hear his 
words but we know them: ‘‘Tell General X. 
to send forward the skirmish line.’’ Those of 
us who have been out of place resume our po- 
sitions; the men resting at ease straighten 
themselves, and the ranks are re-formed with- 
out a command. Some of us staff officers 
dismount and look at our saddle girths; those 
already on the ground remount. 

Galloping rapidly along in the edge of the 
open ground comes a young officer on a 
snow-white horse. His saddle blanket is 
scarlet. Whata fool! No one who has ever 
been in battle but remembers how naturally 
every rifle turns toward the man on a white 
horse; no one but has observed how a bit of 
red enrages the bull of battle. That such 
colors are fashionable in military life must be 
accepted as the most astonishing of all the 
phenomena of human vanity. They would 
seem to have been devised to increase the 
death rate. 

This young officer is in full uniform, as if 
on parade. He is all agleam with bullion—a 
blue-and-gold edition of the Poetry of War, 
A wave of derisive laughter runs abreast of 


him all along the line. But how handsome 


A SON OF THE GODS. 59 


he is! with what careless grace he sits upon 
his horse! 

He reins up within a respectful distance 
of the corps commander and salutes. The 
old soldier nods familiarly; he evidently 
knows him. A brief colloquy between them 
is going on; the young man seems to be 
preferring some request which the elder one 
is indisposed to grant. Let us ride a little 
nearer. Ah! too late—it is ended. The 
young officer salutes again, wheels his horse, 
and rides straight toward the crest of the hill. 
He is deathly pale. 

A thin line of skirmishers, the men de- 
ployed at six paces or so apart, now pushes 
from the wood into the open. The com- 
mander speaks to his bugler, who claps his 
instrument to his lips. Zvra-da-la/ Tra-la-la/ 
The skirmishers halt in their tracks. 

Meantime the young horseman has ad- 
vanced a hundred yards. He is riding ata 
walk, straight up the long slope, with never 
a turn of the head. How glorious! Gods! 
what would we not give to be in his place— 
with his soul! He does not draw his saber; 
his right hand hangs easily at his side. The 
breeze catches the plume in his hat and flut- 
ters itsmartly. The sunshine rests upon his 


60 A SON OF THE GODS. 


shoulder straps, lovingly, like a visible bene- 
diction. Straighton he rides. Ten thousand 
pairs of eyes are fixed upon him with an in- 
tensity that he can hardly fail to feel; ten 
thousand hearts keep quick time to the in- 
audible hoof beats of his snowy steed. He is 
not alone—he draws all souls after him; we 
are but ‘‘dead men all.’’ But we remember 
that we laughed! On and on, straight for the 
hedge lined wall, he rides. Not a look back- 
ward. Oh, if he would but turn—if he could 
but see the love, the adoration, the atonement! 

Not a word is spoken; the populous depths 
of the forest still murmur with their unseen 
and unseeing swarm, but all along the fringe 
there is silence absolute. The burly com- 
mander is an equestrian statue of himself. 
The mounted staff officers, their field glasses 
up, are motionless all. The line of battle in 
the edge of the wood stands at a new kind of 
‘‘attention,’”? each man in the attitude in 
which he was caught by the consciousness of 
what is going on. All these hardened and 
impenitent man killers, to whom death in its 
awfulest forms isa fact familiar to their every- 
day observation; who sleep on hills trem- 
bling with the thunder of great guns, dine in 
the midst of streaming missiles, and play at 


A SON OF THE GODS. 6r 


cards among the dead faces of their dearest 
friends—all are watching with suspended 
breath and beating hearts the outcome of an 
act involving the life of one man. Such is 
the magnetism of courage and devotion. 

If now you should turn your head, you 
would see a simultaneous movement among 
the spectators—a start, as if it had received an 
electric shock—and looking forward again to 
the now distant horseman you would see that 
he has in that instant altered his direction 
and is riding at an angle to his former course. 
The spectators suppose the sudden deflec- 
tion to be caused by a shot, perhaps a wound; 
but take this field glass and you will observe 
that he is riding towards a break in the wall 
and hedge. He means, if not killed, to ride 
through and overlook the country beyond. 

You are not to forget the nature of this 
man’s act; it is not permitted to you to think 
of it as an instance of bravado, nor, on the 
other hand, a needless sacrifice of self. If 
the enemy has not retreated he is in force on 
that ridge. The investigator will encounter 
nothing less than a line of battle; there is no 
need of pickets, videttes, skirmishers, to give 
warning of our approach; our attacking lines 
will be visible, conspicuous, exposed to an 


62 A SON OF THE GODS. 


artillery fire that will shave the ground the 
moment they break from cover, and for half 
the distance toa sheet of rifle bullets in which 
nothing can live. In short, if the enemy is 
there, it would be madness to attack him in 
front; he must be manceuvered out by the im- 
memorial plan of threatening his line of com- 
munication, as necessary to his existence as, 
to the diver at the bottom of the sea, his air 
tube. But how ascertain if the enemy is there? 
There is but one way,—somebody must go 
and see. The natural and customary thing 
to do is to send forward a line of skirmishers, 
But in this case they will answer in the affirm- 
ative with all their lives; the enemy, crouch- 
ing in double ranks behind the stone wall 
and in cover of the hedge, will wait until it is 
possible to count each assailant’s teeth. At 
the first volley a half of the questioning line 
will fall, the other half before it can accom- 
plish the predestined retreat. What a price 
to pay for gratified curiosity! At what a dear 
rate an army must sometimes purchase knowl- 
edge! ‘‘Let me pay all,’’ says this gallant 
man—this military Christ! 

There is no hope except the hope against 
hope that the crest is clear. True, he might 
prefer capture to death. So long as he ad- 


A SOM OF THE GODS. 63 


vances the line will not fire—why should it? 
He can safely ride into the hostile ranks and 
become a prisoner of war. But this would 
defeat his object. It would not answer our 
question; it is necessary either that he return 
unharmed or be shot to death before our 
eyes. Only so shall we know how to act. If 
captured—why, that might have been done 
by a half dozen stragglers. 

Now begins an extraordinary contest of in- 
tellect between a man and an army. Our 
horseman, now within a quarter of a mile of 
the crest, suddenly wheels to the left and gal- 
lops in a direction parallel to it. He has 
caught sight of his antagonist; he knows all. 
Some slight advantage of ground has enabled 
him to overlook a part of the line. If he 
were here, he could tell us in words. But that 
is now hopeless; he must make the best use 
of the few minutes of life remaining to him, 
by compelling the enemy himself to tell us as 
‘much and as plainly as possible—which, nat- 
urally, that discreet power is reluctant to do. 
Not a rifleman in those crouching ranks, not 
a cannoneer at those masked and shotted 
guns, but knows the needs of the situation, 
the imperative duty of forbearance. Besides, 
there has been time enough to forbid them 


64 A SON OF THE GODS. 


all to fire. True, a single rifle shot might 
drop him and be no great disclosure. But 
firing is infectious—and see how rapidly he 
moves, with never a pause except as he 
whirls his horse about to take a new direction, 
never directly backward toward us, never di- 
rectly forward toward his executioners. All 
this is visible through the glass; it seems 
occurring within pistol shot; we see all but 
the enemy, whose presence, whose thoughts, 
whose motives we infer. Tothe unaided eye 
there is nothing but a black figure on a white 
horse, tracing slow zigzags against the slope _ 
of a distant hill—so slowly they seem almost 
to creep. . 

Now—the glass again—he has tired of his 
failure, or sees his error, or has gone mad; 
he is dashing directly forward at the wall, as 
if to take it ata leap, hedge and all! One 
moment only and he wheels right about and 
is speeding like the wind straight down the 
slope—toward his friends, toward his death! 
Instantly the wall is topped with a fierce roll 
of smoke for a distance of hundreds of yards 
to right and left. This is as instantly dissi- 
pated by the wind, and before the rattle of 
the rifles reaches us, he is down.- No, he 
recovers his seat; he has but pulled hjs horse 


A SON OF THE GODS. 65 


upon its haunches. They are up and away! 
A tremendous cheer bursts from our ranks, 
relieving the insupportable tension of our 
feelings. And the horse and its rider? Yes, 
they are up and away. Away, indeed—they 
are making directly to our left, parallel to 
the now steadily blazing and smoking wall. 
The rattle of the musketry is continuous, and 
every bullet’s target is that courageous heart. 
Suddenly a great bank of white smoke 
pushes upward from behind the wall. An- 
other and another—a dozen roll up before 
the thunder of the explosions and the hum- 
ming of the missiles reach our ears, and the 
missiles themselves come bounding through 
clouds of dust into our covert, knocking over 
here and there a man and causing a tempo- 
rary distraction, a passing thought of self. 
The dust drifts away. Incredible!—that 
enchanted horse and rider have passed a 
ravine and are climbing another slope to un- 
veil another conspiracy of silence, to thwart 
the will of another armed host. Another mo- 
ment and that crest too is in eruption. The 
horse rears and strikes the air with its fore- 
feet. They are down at last. But look 
again—the man has detached himself from 
the dead animal. He stands erect, motion- 


5 


é6 A SON OF THE Gods. 


less, holding his saber in his right hand 
straight above his head. His face is to the 
enemy. Now he lowers his hand to a level 
with his face, moves it outward, the blade of 
the saber describing a downward curve. It 
is a sign to the enemy, to us, to the world, to 
posterity. It isa hero’s salute to death and 
history. 

Again the spell is broken; our men attempt 
to cheer; they are choking with emotion; 
they utter hoarse, discordant cries; they 
clutch their weapons and press tumultuously 
forward into the open. The skirmishers, 
without orders, against orders, are going for- 
ward ata keen run, like hounds unleashed. 
Our cannon speak and the enemy’s now open 
in full chorus, to right and left as far as we 
can see; the distant crest, seeming now so 
near, erects its towers of cloud, and the great 
shot pitch roaring down among our moving 
masses. Flag after flag of ours emerges from 
the wood, line after line sweeps forth, catch- 
ing the sunlight on its burnished arms. The 
rear battalions alone are in obedience; they 
preserve their proper distance from the insur- 
gent front. 

The commander has not moved. He now 
removes his field glass from his eyes and 


A SON OF THE GODS. 67 


glances to the right and left. He sees the 
human current flowing on either side of him 
and his huddled escort, like tide waves parted 
by arock. Nota sign of feeling in his face; 
he is thinking. Again he directs his eyes 
forward; they slowly traverse that malign and 
awful crest. He addresses a calm word to his 
bugler. Zyva-la-la/ Tra-la-la/ The injunc- 
tion has an imperiousness which enforces it. 
It is repeated by all the bugles of all the 
subordinate commanders; the sharp metallic 
notes assert themselves above the hum of the 
advance, and penetrate the sound of the can- 
non. To halt is to withdraw. The colors 
move slowly back; the lines face about and 
sullenly follow, bearing their wounded; the 
skirmishers return, gathering up the dead. 
Ah, those many, many needless dead! That 
great soul whose beautiful body is lying over 
yonder, so conspicuous against the sere hill- 
side—could it not have been spared the bitter 
consciousness of a vain devotion? Would 
one exception have marred too much the 
pitiless perfection of the divine, eternal plan? 


3 ~ a. 
a 
. cf 


ONE OF THE MISSING. 


_— 


.) FROME SEARING, a private soldier of 

General Sherman’s army, then confront- 
ing the enemy at and about Kenesaw Mount- 
ain, Georgia, turned his back upon a small 
group of officers, with whom he had been talk- 
ing in low tones, stepped across a light line 
ot earthworks, and disappeared in a forest. 
None of the men in line behind the works had 
said a word to him, nor had he so much as 
nodded to them in passing, but all who saw 
understood that this brave man had been in- 
trusted with some perilous duty. Jerome 
Searing, though a private, did not serve in the 
ranks; he was detailed for service at division 
headquarters, being borne upon the rolls as 
an orderly. ‘‘Orderly’’ isa word covering a 
multitude of duties. An orderly may be a 
messenger, a clerk, an officer’s servant—any- 
thing. He may perform services for which 
no provision is made in orders and army reg- 
ulations. Their nature may depend upon his 


(69) 


‘70 ONE OF THE MISSING. 


aptitude, upon favor, upon accident. Private 
Searing, an incomparable marksman, young 
—it is surprising how young we all were in 
those days—hardy, intelligent, and insensible 
to fear, was ascout. The general command- 
ing his division was not content to obey orders 
blindly without knowing what was in his front, 
even when his command was not on detached 
service, but formed a fraction of the line of 
the army; nor was he satisfied to receive his 
knowledge of his vis-a-vis through the cus- 
tomary channels; he wanted to know more 
than he was apprised of by the corps com- 
mander and the collisions of pickets and skir- 
mishers. Hence Jerome Searing—with his 
extraordinary daring, his woodcraft, his sharp 
eyes and truthful tongue. On this occasion 
his instructions were simple: to get as near 
the enemy’s lines as possible and learn all 
that he could. 

In a few moments he had arrived at the 
picket line, the men on duty there lying in 
groups of from two to four behind little banks 
of earth scooped out of the slight depression 
in which they lay, their rifles protruding from 
the green boughs with which they had masked 
their small defenses. The forest extended 
without a break toward the front, so solemn 


ONE OF THE MISSING. 71 


and silent that only by an effort of the imagi- 
nation could it be conceived as populous with 
armed men, alert and vigilant—a forest for- 
midable with possibilities of battle. Pausing a 
moment in one of these rifle pits to apprise 
the men of his intention, Searing crept stealth- 
ily forward on his hands and knees and was 
soon lost to view in a dense thicket of under- 
brush. 

‘‘That is the last of him,’’ said one of the 
men; ‘‘I wish I had his rifle; those fellows 
will hurt some of us with it.”’ 

Searing crept on, taking advantage of every 
accident of ground and growth to give him- 
self better cover. His eyes penetrated every- 
where, his eats took note of every sound. 
He stilled his breathing, and at the cracking 
of a twig beneath his knee stopped his prog- 
ress and hugged the earth. It was slow work 
but not tedious; the danger made it exciting, 
but by no physical signs was the excitement 
manifest. His pulse was as regular, his nerves 
were as steady, as if he were trying to trap a 
sparrow. 

**TIt seems a long time,’’ he thought, ‘“‘but 
I cannot have come very far; I am still alive.’’ 

He smiled at his own method of estimating 
distance, and crept forward. A moment later 


92 ONE OF THE MISSING. 


he suddenly flattened himself upon the earth 
and lay motionless, minute after minute. 
Through a narrow opening in the bushes he 
had caught sight of a small mound of yellow 
clay—one of the enemy’s rifle pits. After 
some little time he cautiously raised his head, 
inch by inch, then his body upon his hands, 
spread out on each side of him, all the while 
intently regarding the hillock of clay. In 
another moment he was upon his feet, rifle in 
hand, striding rapidly forward with little at- 
tempt at concealment. He had rightly inter- 
preted the signs, whatever they were; the 
enemy was gone. 

To assure himself beyond a doubt before 
going back to report upon so important a 
matter, Searing pushed forward across the 
line of abandoned pits, running from cover to 
cover in the more open forest, his eyes vigi- 
lant to discover possible stragglers. He came 
to the edge of a plantation—one of those for- 
lorn, deserted homesteads of the last years of 
the war, upgrown with brambles, ugly with 
broken fences, and desolate with vacant build- 
ings having blank apertures in place of doors 
and windows. After a keen reconnoissance 
from the safe seclusion of a clump of- young 
pines, Searing ran lightly across a field and 


ONE OF THE MISSING. 4 


through an orchard to a small structure which 
stood apart from the other farm buildings, on 
a slight elevation, which he thought would 
enable him to overlook a large scope of coun- 
try in the direction that he supposed the en- 
emy to have taken in withdrawing. This 
building, which had originally consisted of a 
single room, elevated upon four posts about 
ten feet high, was now little more than a roof; 
the floor had fallen away, the joists and planks 
loosely piled on the ground below or resting 
on end at various angles, not wholly torn from 
their fastenings above. The supporting posts 
were themselves no longer vertical. It looked 
as if the whole edifice would go down at the 
touch of a finger. Concealing himself in the 
débris of joists and flooring, Searing looked 
across the open ground between his point of 
view and a spur of Kenesaw Mountain, a 
half mile away. A road leading up and 
across this spur was crowded with troops— 
the rear guard of the retiring enemy, their 
gun barrels gleaming in the morning sunlight. 

Searing had now learned all that he could 
hope to know. It was his duty to return to 
his own command with all possible speed and 
report his discovery. But the gray column 
of infantry toiling up the mountain road was 


74 ONE OF THE MISSING. 


singularly tempting. His rifle—an ordinary 
‘Springfield,’ but fitted with a globe sight 
and hair trigger—would easily send its ounce 
and a quarter of lead hissing into their midst. 
That would probably not affect the duration 
and result of the war, but it is the business of 
a soldier to kill. It is also his pleasure if he 
is a good soldier. Searing cocked his rifle 
and ‘‘set’’ the trigger. 

But it was decreed from the beginning of 
time that Private Searing was not to murder 
anybody that bright summer morning, nor 
was the Confederate retreat to be announced 
by him For countless ages events had been 
so matching themselves together in that won- 
drous mosaic to some parts of which, dimly 
discernible, we give the name of history, that 
the acts which he had in will would have 
marred the harmony of the pattern. 

Some twenty-five years previously the 
Power charged with the execution of the work 
according to the design had provided against 
that mischance by causing the birth of a cer- 
tain male child in a little village at the foot of 
the Carpathian Mountains, had carefully 
reared it, supervised its education, directed 
its desires into a military channel, and in due 
time made it an officer of artillery. By the 


ONE OF THE MISSING. 48 


concurrence of an infinite number of favoring 
influences and their preponderance over an 
infinite number of opposing ones, this officer 
of artillery had been made to commit a breach 
of discipline and fly from his native country 
to avoid punishment. He had been directed 
to New Orleans (instead of New York) where 
a recruiting officer awaited him on the wharf. 
He was enlisted and promoted, and things 
were so ordered that he now commanded a 
Confederate battery some three miles along 
the line from where Jerome Searing, the Fed- 
eral scout, stood cocking his rifle. Nothing 
had been neglected—at every step in the prog- 
ress of both these men’s lives, and in the lives 
of their ancestors and contemporaries, and of 
the lives of the contemporaries of their ances- 
tors—the right thing had been done to bring 
about the desired result. Had anything in all 
this vast concatenation been overlooked, 
Private Searing might have fired on the re- 
treating Confederates that morning,and would 
perhaps have missed. As it fell out, a cap- 
tain of artillery, having nothing better to do 
while awaiting his turn to pull out and be off, 
amused himself by sighting a field piece ob- 
liquely to his right at what he took to be some 
Federal officers on the crest of a hill, and dis- 
charged it, The shot flew high of its mark, 


76 ONE OF THE MISSING. 


As Jerome Searing drew back the hammer 
of his rifle, and, with his eyes upon the distant 
Confederates, considered where he could plant 
his shot with the best hope of making a widow 
or an orphan or a childless mother—perhaps 
all three, for Private Searing, although he had 
repeatedly refused promotion, was not with- 
out acertain kind of ambition—he heard a 
rushing sound in the air, like that made by 
the wings of a great bird swooping down 
upon its prey. More quickly than he could 
apprehend the gradation, it increased to a 
hoarse and horrible roar, as the missile that 
made it sprang at him out of the sky, strik- 
ing with a deafening impact one of the posts 
supporting the confusion of timbers above 
him, smashing it into matchwood, and bring- 
ing down the crazy edifice with a loud clatter, 
in clouds of blinding dust! 


Lieutenant Adrian Searing, in command of 
the picket guard on that part of the line 
through which his brother Jerome had passed 
on his mission, sat with attentive ears in his 
breastwork behind the line. Not the faintest 
sound escaped him; the cry of a bird, the 
barking of a squirrel, the noise of the wind 
among the pines—all were anxiously noted by 
his overstrained sense. Suddenly, directly 


ONE OF THE MISSING. "4 


in front ot his line, he heard a faint, confused 
rumble, like the clatter of a falling building 
translated by distance. At the same moment 
an officer approached him on foot from the 
rear and saluted. 

‘Lieutenant,’ said the aide, ‘‘ the colonel 
directs you to move forward your line and feel 
the enemy if you find him. If not, continue 
the advance until directed to halt. There is 
reason to think that the enemy has retreated.” 

The lieutenant nodded and said nothing; 
the other officer retired. In a moment the 
men, apprised of their duty by the non-com- 
missioned officers in low tones, had deployed 
from their rifle pits and were moving forward 
in skirmishing order, with set teeth and beat- 
ing hearts. The lieutenant mechanically 
looked at his watch. Six o’clock and eight- 
een minutes. 


When Jerome Searing recovered conscious- 
ness, he did not at once understand what had 
occurred. It was, indeed, some time before 
he opened his eyes. For a while he believed 
that he had died and been buried, and he 
tried to recall some portions of the burial 
service. He thought that his wife was kneel- 
ing upon his grave, adding her weight to 
that of the earth upon his breast. The two 


48 ONE OF THE MISSING, 


of them, widow and earth, had crushed his 
coffin. Unless the children should persuade 
her to go home, he would not much longer 
be able to breathe. He felt a sense of wrong. 
*‘T cannot speak to her,’’ he thought; ‘‘the 
dead have no voice; and if I open my eyes 
I shall get them full of earth.” 

He opened his eyes—a great expanse of 
blue sky, rising from a fringe of the tops of 
trees. In the foreground, shutting out some 
of the trees, a high, dun mound, angular in 
outline and crossed by an intricate, pattern- 
less system of straight lines; in the center a 
bright ring of metal—the whole an immeas- 
urable distance away—a distance so incon- 
ceivably great that it fatigued him, and he 
closed his eyes. The moment that he did so 
he was conscious of an insufferable light. A 
sound was in his ears like the low, rhythmic 
thunder of a distant sea breaking in success- 
ive waves upon the beach, and out of this 
noise, seeming a part of it, or possibly com- 
ing from beyond it, and intermingled with 
its ceaseless undertone, came the articulate 
words: ‘‘Jerome Searing, you are caught 
like a rat in a trap—in a trap, trap, trap.”’ 

Suddenly there fell a great silence, a black 
darkness, an infinite tranquillity, and Jerome 


ONE OF THE MISSING. 79 


Searing, perfectly conscious of his rathood, 
and well assured of the trap that he was in, 
remembered all, and, nowise alarmed, again 
opened his eyes to reconnoitre, to note the 
strength of his enemy, to plan his defense. 

He was caught in a reclining posture, his 
back firmly supported bya solid beam. An- . 
other lay across his breast, but he had been 
able to shrink a little away from it so that it 
no longer oppressed him, though it was im- 
movable. A brace joining it at an angle had 
wedged him against a pile of boards on his 
left, fastening the arm on that side. His 
legs, slightly parted and straight along the 
ground, were covered upward to the knees 
with a mass of débris which towered above 
his narrow horizon. His head was as rigidly 
fixed as in a vice; he could move his eyes, his 
chin—no more. Only his right arm was 
partly free. ‘You must help us out of this,”’ 
he said to it. But he could not get it from 
under the heavy timber athwart his chest, 
nor move it outward more than six inches at 
the elbow. 

Searing was not seriously injured, nor did 
he suffer pain. A smart rap on the head 
from a flying fragment of the splintered post, 
incurred simultaneously with the frightfully 


80 ONE OF THE MISSING. 


sudden shock to the nervous system, had 
momentarily dazed him. His term of un- 
consciousness, including the period of recov- 
ery, during which he had had the strange 
fancies, had probably not exceeded a few 
seconds, for the dust of the wreck had not 
wholly cleared away as he began an intelli- 
gent survey of the situation. 

With his partly free right hand he now 
tried to get hold of the beam which lay 
across, but not quite against, his breast. In 
no way could he doso. He was unable to 
depress the shoulder so as to push the elbow 
beyond that edge of the timber which was 
nearest his knees; failing in that, he could 
not raise the forearm and hand to grasp the 
beam. The brace that made an angle with 
it downward and backward prevented him 
from doing anything in that direction, and 
between it and his body the space was not 
half as wide as the length of his forearm. 
Obviously he could not get his hand under 
the beam nor over it; he could not, in fact, 
touch it at all. Having demonstrated his in- 
ability, he desisted, and began to think if he 
could reach any of the débris piled upon his 
legs. 

In surveying the mass with a view to de- 


ONE OF THE MISSING. 81 


termining that point, his attention was ar- 
rested by what seemed to be a ring of shining 
metal immediately in front of his eyes. It 
appeared to him at first to surround some 
perfectly black substance, and it was some- 
what more than a half inch in diameter. It 
suddenly occurred to his mind that the black- 
ness was simply shadow, and that the ring 
was in fact the muzzle of his rifle protruding 
from the pile of débris. He was not long in 
satisfying himself that this was so—if it was a 
satisfaction. By closing either eye he could 
look a little way along the barrel—to the 
point where it was hidden by the rubbish 
that held it. He could see the one side, 
with the corresponding eye, at apparently 
the same angle as the other side with the 
other eye. Looking with the right eye, the 
weapon seemed to be directed at a point to 
the left of his head, and vice versa. He was 
unable to see the upper surface of the barrel, 
but could see the under surface of the stock 
at a slight angle. The piece was, in fact, 
aimed at the exact center of his forehead. 

In the perception of this circumstance, in 
_ the recollection that just previously to the 
mischance of which this uncomfortable situ- 
ation was the result, he had cocked the gun 

6 


82 ONE OF THE MISSING. 


and set the trigger so that a touch would 
discharge it. Private Searing was affected 
with a feeling of uneasiness. But that was as 
far as possible from fear; he was a brave 
man, somewhat familiar with the aspect of 
rifles from that point of view, and of cannon, 
too; and now he recalled, with something 
like amusement, an incident of his experi- 
ence at the storming of Missionary Ridge, 
where, walking up to one of the enemy’s 
embrasures from which he had seen a heavy 
gun throw charge after charge of grape among 
the assailants, he thought for a moment that 
the piece had been withdrawn; he could see 
nothing in the opening but a brazen circle. 
What that was he had understood just in 
time to step aside as it pitched another peck 
of iron down that swarming slope. To face 
firearms is one of the commonest incidents in 
a soldier’s life—firearms, too, with malevo- 
lent eyes blazing behind them. That is what 
a soldier is for. Still, Private Searing did 
not altogether relish the situation, and turned 
away his eyes. 

After groping, aimless, with his right hand 
for a time, he made an ineffectual attempt to 
release his left. Then he tried to disengage 
his head, the fixity of which was the more 


ONE OF THE MISSING. 83 


annoying from his ignorance of what held it. 
Next he tried to free his feet, but while ex- 
erting the powerful muscles of his legs for 
that purpose it occurred to him that a dis- 
turbance of the rubbish which held them 
might discharge the rifle; how it could have 
endured what had already befallen it he could 
not understand, although memory assisted 
him with various instances in point. One in 
particular he recalled, in which, in a moment 
of mental abstraction, he had clubbed his 
rifle and beaten out another gentleman’s 
brains, observing afterward that the weapon 
which he had been diligently swinging by the 
muzzle was loaded, capped, and at full cock 
—knowledge of which circumstance would 
doubtless have cheered his antagonist to 
longer endurance. He had always smiled 
in recalling that blunder of his ‘‘green and 
salad days’’ as a soldier, but now he did not 
smile. He turned his eyes again to the muz- 
zle of the gun, and for a moment fancied that 
it had moved; it seemed somewhat nearer. 
Again he looked away. The tops of the 
distant trees beyond the bounds of the plan- 
tation interested him; he had not before ob- 
served how light and feathery they seemed, 
nor how darkly blue the sky was, even among 


84 ONE OF THE MISSING. 


their branches, where they somewhat paled it 
with their green; above him it appeared al- 
most black. ‘‘It will be uncomfortably hot 
here,’ he thought, ‘‘as the day advances. 
I wonder which way I am looking.”’ 

Judging by such shadows as he could see, 
he decided that his face was due north; he 
would at least not have the sun in his eyes, 
and north—well, that was toward his wife 
and children. 

‘*Bah!’’ he exclaimed aloud, ‘‘what have 
they to do with it?”’ 

He closed his eyes. ‘‘AsI can’t get out, 
I may as well go to sleep. The rebels are 
gone, and some of our fellows are sure to 
stray out here foraging. They’ll find me.’’ 

But he did not sleep. Gradually he be- 
came sensible of a pain in his forehead—a 
dull ache, hardly perceptible at first, but 
growing more and more uncomfortable. He 
opened his eyes and it was gone—closed 
them and it returned. ‘‘The devil!’’ he 
said, irrelevantly, and stared again at the 
sky. He heard the singing of birds, the 
strange metallic note of the meadow lark, 
suggesting the clash of vibrant blades. He 
fell into pleasant memories of his childhood, 
played again with his brother and sister, 


ONE OF THE MISSING. 85 


raced across the fields, shouting to alarm the 
sedentary larks, entered the somber forest 
beyond, and with timid steps followed the faint 
path to Ghost Rock, standing at last with 
audible heart throbs before the Dead Man’s 
Cave and seeking to penetrate its awful mys- 
tery. For the first time he observed that 
the opening of the haunted cavern was en- 
circled by a ring of metal. Then all else 
vanished and left him gazing into the barrel 
of his rifle as before. But whereas before it 
had seemed nearer, it now seemed an incon- 
ceivable distance away, and all the more sin- 
ister for that. He cried out, and, startled by 
something in his own voice—the note of fear 
—lied to himself in denial: ‘‘If I don’t sing 
out I may stay here till I die.’’ 

He now made no further attempt to evade 
the menacing stare of the gun barrel. If he 
turned away his eyes an instant it was to 
look for assistance (although he could: not 
see the ground on either side the ruin), and 
he permitted them to return, obedient to the 
imperative fascination. If he closed them, it 
was from weariness, and instantly the poign- 
ant pain in his forehead—the prophecy and 
menace of the bullet—forced him to reopen 
them, 


86 ONE OF THE MISSING. 


The tension of nerve and brain was too se- 
vere; nature came to his relief with intervals 
of unconsciousness. Reviving from one of 
_ these, he became sensible of a sharp, smart- 
ing pain in his right hand, and when he 
worked his fingers together, or rubbed his 
palm with them, he could feel that they were 
wet and slippery. He could not see the 
hand, but he knew the sensation; it was run- 
ning blood. In his delirium he had beaten it | 
against the jagged fragments of the wreck, 
had clutched it full of splinters. He resolved 
that he would meet his fate more manly. He 
was a plain, common soldier, had no religion 
and not much philosophy; he could not die 
like a hero, with great and wise last words, 
even if there were someone to hear them, but 
he could die ‘‘game,’’ and he would. But if 
he could only know when to expect the shot! 

Some rats which had probably inhabited 
the shed came sneaking and scampering 
about. One of them mounted the pile of dé- 
bris that held the rifle; another followed, and 
another. Searing regarded them at first 
with indifference, then with friendly interest; 
then, as the thought flashed into his bewil- 
dered mind that they might touch the trigger 
of his rifle, he screamed at them to go away. 
‘Tt is no business of yours,’’ he cried, 


ONE OF THE MISSING. 87 


The creatures left; they would return later, 
attack his face, gnaw away his nose, cut his 
throat—he knew that, but he hoped by that 
- time to be dead. 

Nothing could now unfix his gaze from the 
little ring of metal with .its black interior. 
The pain in his forehead was fierce and con- 
stant. He felt it gradually penetrating the 
brain more and more deeply, until at last its 
progress was arrested by the wood at the 
back of his head. It grew momentarily more 
insufferable; he began wantonly beating his 
lacerated hand against the splinters again to 
counteract that horrible ache. It seemed to 
throb with a slow, regular, recurrence each 
pulsation sharper than the preceding, and 
sometimes he cried out, thinking he felt the 
fatal bullet. No thoughts of home, of wife 
and children, of country, of glory. The whole 
record of memory was effaced. The world 
had passed away—not a vestige remained. 
Here in this confusion of timbers and boards 
is the sole universe. Here is immortality in 
time—each pain an everlasting life. The 
throbs tick off eternities. 

Jerome Searing, the man of courage, the 
formidable enemy, the strong, resolute war- 
rior, was as pale as a ghost. His jaw was 


88 ONE OF THE MISSING. 


fallen; his eyes protruded; he trembled in 
every fiber; a cold sweat bathed his entire © 
body; he screamed with fear. He was not 
insane—he was terrified. 

In groping about with his torn and bleed- 
ing hand he seized at last a strip of board, 
and, pulling, felt it give way. It lay parallel 
with his body, and by bending his elbow as 
much as the contracted space would permit, 
he could draw it a few inches at atime. Fin- 
ally it was altogether loosened from the 
wreckage covering his legs; he could lift it 
clear of the ground its whole length. A 
great hope came into his mind: perhaps he 
could work it upward, that is to say back- 
ward, far enough to lift the end and push 
aside the rifle; or, if that were too tightly 
wedged, so hold the strip of board as to deflect 
the bullet. With this object he passed it back- 
ward inch by inch, hardly daring to breathe 
lest that act somehow defeat his intent, and 
more than ever unable to remove his eyes 
from the rifle, which might perhaps now 
hasten to improve its waning opportunity. 
Something at least had been gained; in the 
occupation of his mind in this attempt at self- 
defense he was less sensible of the pain in his 
head and had ceased to scream, But he was 


ONE OF THE MISSING. 89 


still dreadfully frightened and his teeth rattled 
like castanets. 

The strip of board ceased to move to the 
suasion of his hand. He tugged at it with 
all his strength, changed the direction of its 
length all he could, but it had met some ex- 
tended obstruction behind him, and the end 
in front was still too far away to clear the pile 
of débris and reach the muzzle of the gun. 
It extended, indeed, nearly as far as the 
trigger guard, which, uncovered by the rub- 
bish, he could imperfectly see with his right 
eye. He tried to break the strip with his 
hand, but had no leverage. Perceiving his 
defeat, all his terror returned, augmented ten- 
fold. Theblack aperture of the rifle appeared 
to threaten a sharper and more imminent 
death in punishment of his rebellion. The 
track of the bullet through his head ached 
with an intenser anguish. He began to trem- 
ble again. 

Suddenly he became composed. His 
tremor subsided. He clinched his teeth and 
drew down his eyebrows. He had not ex- 
hausted his means of defense; a new design 
had shaped itself in his mind—another plan 
of battle. Raising the front end of the strip 
of board, he carefully pushed it forward 


90 ONE OF THE MISSING. 


through the wreckage at the side of the rifle 
- until it pressed against the trigger guard. 
Then he moved the end slowly outward until 
he could feel that it had cleared it, then, clos- 
ing his eyes, thrust it against the trigger with 
all his strength! There was no explosion; 
the rifle had been discharged as it dropped 
from his hand when the building fell. But 
Jerome Searing was dead. — 


A line of Federal skirmishers swept across 
the plantation toward the mountain. They 
passed on both sides of the wrecked build- 
ing, observing nothing. At a short distance 
in their rear came their commander, Lieu- 
tenant Adrian Searing. He casts his eyes 
curiously upon the ruin and sees a dead body 
half buried in boards and timbers. It is so 
covered with dust that its clothing is Confed- 
erate gray. Its face is yellowish white; the 
cheeks are fallen in, the temples sunken, too, 
with sharp ridges about them, making the 
forehead forbiddingly narrow; the upper lip, 
slightly lifted, shows the white teeth, rigidly 
clinched. The hair is heavy with moisture, 
the face as wet as the dewy grass all about. 
From his point of view the officer does not 
observe the rifle; the man was apparently 


killed by the fall of the building. 


“ONE or THE MISSING. 
“Dead a weak?” said the officer curtly, 
‘moving on mechanically pulling out his watch * 


as if to verify his estimate of time. Six 
o'clock and forty minutes, ! 


KILLED AT RESACA. 

(THE best soldier of our staff was Lieuten- 

ant Herman Brayle, one of the two aides- 
de-camp. I don’t remember where the gen- 
eral picked him up; from sonie Ohio regi- 
ment, I think; none of us had previously 
known him, and it would have been strange 
if we had, for no two of us came from the 
same State, nor even from adjoining States. 
The general seemed to think that a position 
on his staff was a distinction that should be 
so judiciously conferred as not to beget any 
sectional jealousies and imperil the integrity 
of that portion of the Union which was still 
an integer. He would not even choose them 
from his-own command, but by some jugglery 
at department headquarters obtained them 
from other brigades. Under such circum- 
stances a man’s services had to be very dis- 
tinguished indeed to be heard of by his family 
and the friends of his youth; and ‘‘ the speak- 
ing trump of fame’’ was a trifle hoarse from 
loquacity, anyhow. 

(93)- 


04 KILLED AT RESACA. 


Lieutenant Brayle was more than six feet in 
height and of splendid proportions, with the 
light hair and gray-blue eyes which men simi- 
larly gifted usually find associated with a high 
order of courage. As he was commonly in 
full uniform, especially in action, when most 
officers are content to be less flamboyantly 
attired, he was a very striking and conspic- 
uous figure. As for the rest, he had a gentle- 
man’s manners, a scholar’s head, and a lion’s 
heart. His age was about thirty. 

We all soon came to like Brayle as efece 
as we admired him, and it was with sincere 
concern that in the engagement at Stone’s 
River—our first action after he joined us—we 
observed that he had one most objectionable 
and unsoldierly quality, he was vain of his 
courage. During all the vicissitudes and mu- 
tations of that hideous encounter, whether 
our troops were fighting in the open cotton 
fields, in the cedar thickets, or behind the 
railway embankment, he did not once take 
cover, except when sternly commanded to do 
so by the general, who commonly had other 
things to think of than the lives of his staff 
officers—or those of his men, for that matter. 

In every subsequent engagement while 
Brayle was with us it wasthe same way. He 


KILLED AT RESACA. 95 


would sit his horse like an equestrian statue, 
in a storm of bullets and grape, in the most 
exposed places—wherever, in fact, duty, re- 
quiring him to go, permitted him to remain 
—when, without trouble and with distinct 
advantage to his reputation for common sense 
he might have been in such security as is 
possible on a battle field in the brief intervals 
of personal inaction. 

On foot, from necessity or in deference to 
his dismounted commander or associates, his 
conduct was the same. He would stand like 
a rock in the open when officers and men 
alike had taken to cover; while men older in 
service and years, higher in rank and of un- 
questionable intrepidity, were loyally preserv- 
ing behind the crest of a hill lives infinitely 
precious to their country, this fellow would 
stand, equally idle, on the ridge, facing in the 
direction of the sharpest fire. 

When battles are going on in open ground 
it frequently occurs that the opposing lines,’ 
confronting one another within a stone’s 
throw for hours, hug the earth as closely as 
if they loved it. The line officers in their 
proper places flatten themselves no less, and 
the field officers, their horses all killed or 
sent to the rear, crouch beneath the infernal 


96 KILLED AT RESACA. 


canopy of hissing lead and screaming iron 
without a thought of personal dignity. 

In such circumstances the life of a staff 
officer of a brigade is distinctly ‘“‘not a happy 
one,’’ mainly because of its precarious tenure 
and the unnerving alternations of emotion to 
which he is exposed. From a position of 
that comparative security from which a civil- 
ian would ascribe his escape to a ‘‘miracle,”’ 
he may be dispatched with an order to some 
commander of a prone regiment in the front 
line—a person for the moment inconspicuous 
and not always easy to locate without a deal 
of search among men somewhat preoccupied, 
and in a din in which question and answer 
alike must be imparted in the sign language. 
It is customary in such cases to duck the head 
and scuttle away on a keen run, an object of 
lively interest to some thousands of admiring 
marksmen. In returning—well, it is not cus- 
tomary to return. 

Brayle’s practice was different. He would 
consign his horse to the care of an orderly— 
he loved his horse—and walk quietly away 
on his horrible errand with never a stoop of 
the back, his splendid figure, accentuated by 
his uniform, holding the eye with a strange 
fascination. Wewatched him with suspended 


KILLED AT RESACA. 97 


breath, our hearts in our mouths. On one 
occasion of this kind, indeed, one of our 
number, an impetuous stammerer, was so 
possessed by his emotion that he shouted at 
me:— ea 

“Pll b-b-bet you -t-two d-d-dollars they 
d-drop him b-b-fore he g-gets to that d-d- 
ditch!”’ 

I did not accept the brutal wager; I thought 
they would. Let me do justice to a brave 
man’s memory; in all these needless expos- 
ures of life there was no visible bravado nor 
subsequent narration. In the few instances 
when some of us had ventured to remonstrate, 
Brayle had smiled pleasantly and made some 
light reply, which, however, had not encour- 
aged a further pursuit of the subject. Once 
he said:— 

‘Captain, if ever I come to grief by for- 
getting your advice, I hope my last moments 
will be cheered by the sound of your beloved 
voice breathing into my ear the blessed words, 
‘I told you so.’”’ 

We laughed at the captain—just why we 
could probably not have explained—and that 
afternoon when he was shot to rags from an 
ambuscade Brayle remained by the body for 
some time, adjusting the limbs with needless 


7 


98 RILLED AT RESACA. 


care—there in the middle of a road swept by 
gusts of grape and canister! It is easy to 
condemn this kind of thing, and not very 
difficult to_refrain from imitation, but it is im- 
possible not to respect, and Brayle was liked 
none the less for the weakness which had so 
heroic an expression. We wished he were 
not a fool, but he went on that way to the 
end, sometimes hard hit, but always return- 
ing to duty as good as new. 

Of course, it came at last; he who defies 
the law of probabilities challenges an adver- 
sary that is never beaten. It was at Resaca, 
in Georgia, during the movement that resulted 
in the capture of Atlanta. In front of our 
brigade the enemy’s line of earthworks ran 
through open fields along a slight crest. At 
each end of this open ground we were close 
up to them in the woods, but the clear ground 
we could not hope to occupy until night, 
when the darkness would enable us to burrow 
like moles and throw up earth. At this point 
our line was a quarter-mile away in the edge 
ofawood. Roughly, we formeda semicircle, 
the enemy’s fortified line being the chord of 
the arc. 

‘‘Lieutenant, go tell Colonel Ward-to work 
up as close as he can get cover, and not to 


KILLED AT RESACA. 99 


waste much ammunition in unnecessary fir- 
ing. You may leave your horse.”’ 

When the general gave this direction we 
were in the fringe of the forest, near the right 
extremity of the arc. Colonel Ward was at 
the left. The suggestion to leave the horse 
obviously enough meant that Brayle was to 
take the longer line, through the woods and 
among the men. Indeed, the suggestion was 
needless; to go by the short route meant ab- 
solutely certain failure to deliver the message. 
Before anybody could interpose, Brayle had 
cantered lightly into the field and the enemy’s - 
works were in crackling conflagration. 

“Stop that damned fool!’’ shouted the 
general. 

A private of the escort, with more ambition 
than brains, spurred forward to obey, and 
within ten yards left himself and horse dead on 
the field of honor. 

Brayle was beyond recall, galloping easily 
along parallel to the enemy and less than two 
hundred yards distant. He was a picture ‘to 
see! His hat had been blown or shot from 
his head, and his long, blonde hair rose and fell 
with the motion of his horse. He sat erect 
in the saddle, holding the reins lightly in his 
left hand, his right hanging carelessly at his 


I0O KILLED AT RESACA. 


side. An occasional glimpse of his handsome 
profile as he turned his head one way or the 
other proved that the interest which he took 
in what was going on was natural and without 
affectation. 

The picture was intensely dramatic, but in 
no degree theatrical. Successive scores of 
rifles spat at him viciously as he came within 
range, and our own line in the edge of the 
timber broke out in visible and audible de- 
fense. No longer regardful of themselves or 
their orders, our fellows sprang to their feet, 
and, swarming into the open, sent broad sheets 
of bullets against the blazing crest of the of- 
fending works, which poured an answering 
fire into their unprotected groups with deadly 
effect. The artillery on both sides joined the 
battle, punctuating the rattle and roar with 
deep earth-shaking explosions and tearing 
the air with storms of screaming grape, which, 
from the enemy’s side, splintered the trees 
and spattered them with blood, and from ours 
defiled the smoke of his arms with banks and 
clouds of dust from his parapet. 

My attention had been for a moment averted 
to the general combat, but now,- glancing 
down the unobscured avenue between these 
two thunderclouds, I saw Brayle, the cause 


KILLED AT RESACA. Io! 


of thecarnage. Invisible now from either side, 
and equally doomed by friend and foe, he 
stood in the shot-swept space, motionless, his 
face toward the enemy. At some little dis- 
tance lay his horse. I instantly divined the 
cause of his inaction. 

As topographical engineer I had, early in 
the day, made a hasty examination of the 
ground, and now remembered that at that 
point was a deep and sinuous gully, crossing 
half the field from the enemy’s line, its gen- 
eral course at right angles to it. From where 
we were it was invisible, and Brayle had evi- 
dently not known of it. Clearly, it was im- 
passible. Its salient angles would have af- 
forded him absolute security if he had chosen 
to be satisfied with the miracle already wrought 
in his favor. He could not go forward, he 
would not turn back; he stood awaiting 
death. It did not keep him long waiting. 

By some mysterous coincidence, almost in- 
stantaneously as he fell, the firing ceased, a few 
desultory shots at long intervals serving rather 
to accentuate than break the silence. It was 
as if both sides had suddenly repented of 
their profitless crime. Four stretcher bearers, 
following a sergeant with a white flag, soon 
afterward moved unmolested into the field, 


102 KILLED AT RESACA. 


and made straight for Brayle’s body. Sev- 
eral Confederate officers and men came out to 
meet them, and, with uncovered heads, as- 
sisted them to take up their sacred burden. 
As it was borne away toward us we heard 
beyond the hostile works fifes and a muffled 
drum—a dirge. A generous enemy honored 
the fallen brave. 7 

Amongst the dead man’s effects was a 
soiled Kussia-leather pocketbook. In the 
distribution of mementoes of our friend, which 
the general, as administrator, decreed, this 
fell to me. 

A year after the close of the war, on my 
way to California, I opened and idly inspected 
it. Out of an overlooked compartment fell a 
letter without envelope or address. It was 
in a woman’s handwriting, and began with 
words of endearment, but no name. 

It had the following date line: ‘‘ San Fran- 
cisco, Cal., July 9, 1862.’ The signature 
was ‘‘Darling,’’ in marks of quotation. In- 
cidentally, in the body of the text, the writer’s 
full name was given—Marian Mendenhall. 

The letter showed evidence of cultivation 
and good breeding, but it was an ordinary 
love letter, if a love letter can be ordinary. 
There was not much in it, but there was some- 
thing. It was this:— 


- 


ee 
-— a 


KILLED AT RESACA. 103 


‘Mr. Winters, whom I shall always hate 
for it, has been telling that at some battle 
in Virginia, where he got his hurt, you were 
seen crouching behind a tree. I think he 
wants to injure you in my regard, which he 
knows the story would do if I believed it. I 
could bear to hear of my soldier lover’s death, 
but not of his cowardice.”’ 

These were the words which on that sunny 
afternoon, in a distant region, had slain a 
hundred men. Is woman weak? 

One evening I called on Miss Mendenhall 
to return the letter to her. I intended, also, 
to tell her what she had done—but not that 
she did it. I found her in a handsome 
dwelling on Rincon Hill. She was beautiful, 
well bred—in a word, charming. 

‘You knew Lieutenant Herman Brayle,”’ 
I said, rather abruptly. ‘‘ You know, doubt- 
less, that he fell in battle. Among his effects 
was found this letter from you. My errand 
here is to place it in your hands.”’ 

She mechanically took the letter, glanced 
through it with deepening color, and then, 
looking at me with a smile, said:— 

‘It is very good of you, though I am sure 
it was hardly worth while.’’ She started sud- 
denly, and changed color. ‘‘This stain,’ 
she said, ‘‘is it—surely it is not—’’ 


104 KILLED AT RESACA, 


‘*Madam,’’ I said, ‘‘pardon me, but that is 
the blood of the truest and bravest heart that 
ever beat.”’ 

She hastily flung the letter on the blazing 
coals. ‘‘Uh! I cannot bear the sight of 
blood!”’ she said. ‘‘ How did he die?”’ 

I had involuntarily risen to rescue that scrap 
of paper, sacred even to me, and now stood 
partly behind her. As she asked the question 
she turned her face’ about-and slightly up- 
ward. The light of the burning letter was 
reflected in her eyes, and touched her cheek 
with a tinge of crimson like the stain upon its 
page. I had never seen anything so beauti- 
ful as this detestable creature. 

‘‘He was bitten by a snake,”’ I replied. 


THE AFFAIR AT COULTER’S NOTCH. 


**Do you think, colonel, that your brave 
Cou:ter would like to put one of his guns in 
here?’’ the general asked. 

He was apparently not altogether serious; 
it certainly did not seem a place where any 
artillerist, however brave, would like to put a 
gun. The colonel thought that possibly his 
division commander meant good-humoredly 
to intimate that Captain Coulter’s courage 
had been too highly extolled in a recent con- 
versation between them. 

**General,’”’ he replied, warmly, ‘‘ Coulter 
would like to put a gun anywhere within 
reach of those people,’’ with a motion of his 
hand in the direction of the enemy. 

‘*It is the only place,’’ said the general. 
He was serious, then. 

The place was a depression, a ‘‘ notch,”’ in 
the sharp crest of a hill. It was a pass, and 
through it ran a turnpike, which, reaching 
this highest point in its course by a sinuous 


(105) 


106 THE AFFAIR AT COULTER’S NOTCH. 


ascent through a thin forest, made a similar, 
though less steep, descent toward the enemy. 
For a mile to the left and a mile to the right 
the ridge, though occupied by Federal in- 
fantry lying close behind the sharp crest, and 
appearing as if held in place by atmospheric 
pressure, was inaccessible to artillery. There 
was no place but the bottom of the notch, and 
that was barely wide enough for the roadbed. 
From the Confederate side this point was 
commanded by two batteries posted on a 
slightly lower elevation beyond a creek, and 
a half-mile away. All the guns but one 
were masked by the trees of an orchard; that 
one—it seemed a bit of impudence—was di- 
rectly in front of arather grandiose building, the 
planter’s dwelling. The gun was safe enough 
in its exposure—but only because the Fed- 
eral infantry had been forbidden to fire. 
Coulter’s Notch—it came to be called so— 
was not, that pleasant summer afternoon, a 
place where one would ‘“‘like to put a gun.” 

Three or four dead horses lay there, sprawl- 
ing in the road, three or four dead menina 
trim row at one side of it, and a little back, 
down the hill. All but one were cavalrymen 
belonging to the Federal advance. One was 
a quartermaster. The general commanding 


THE AFFAIR AT COULTER'S NOTCH. 107 


the division, and the colonel commanding the 
brigade, with their staffs and escorts, had 
ridden into the notch to have a look at the 
enemy’s guns—which had straightway ob- 
scured themselves in towering clouds of 
smoke. It was hardly profitable to be curi- 
ous about guns which had the trick of the 
cuttlefish, and the season of observation was 
brief. At its conclusion—a short remove 
backward from where it began—occurred the 
conversation already partly reported. ‘‘It is 
the only place,’’ the general repeated thought- 
fully, ‘‘to get at them.”’ 

The colonel looked at him gravely. 
‘‘There is room for but one gun, General— 
one against twelve.”’ 

“*That is true—for only one at a time,”’ 
said the commander with something like, yet 
not altogether like, a smile. ‘‘But then, 
your brave Coulter—a whole battery in him- 
self,’’ 

The tone of irony was now unmistakable. 
It angered the colonel, but he did not know 
what to say. The spirit of military subor- 
dination is not favorable to retort, nor even 
deprecation. At this momenta young officer 
of artillery came riding slowly up the road 
attended by his bugler. It was Captain 


108 THE AFFAIR AT COULTER'S NOTCH. 


Coulter. He could not have been more than 
twenty-three years of age. He was of me- 
dium height, but very slender and lithe, sit- 
ting his horse with something of the air of a 
civilian. In face he was of a type singularly 
unlike the men about him; thin, high-nosed, 
gray-eyed, with a slight blonde mustache, 
and long, rather straggling hair of the same 
color. There was an apparent negligence in 
his attire. His cap was worn with the visor 
a trifle askew; his coat was buttoned only at 
the sword belt, showing a considerable ex- 
panse of white shirt, tolerably clean for that 
stage of the campaign. But the negligence 
was all in his dress and bearing; in his face 
was a look of intense interest in his surround- 
ings. His gray eyes, which seemed occasion- 
ally to strike right and left across the land- 
scape, like search-lights, were for the most 
part fixed upon the sky beyond the Notch; 
until he should arrive at the summit of the 
road, there was nothing else in that direc- 
tion to see. As he came opposite his di- 
vision and brigade commanders at the road- 
side he saluted mechanically and was about 
to pass on. Moved by a sudden ie. the 
colonel signed to him to halt. 

‘*Captain Coulter,’ he said, ‘‘the enemy 


THE AFFAIR AT COULTER’S NOTCH. 100 


has twelve pieces over there on the next ridge. 
If I rightly understand the general, he directs 
that you bring up a gun and engage them.”’ 

There was a blank silence; the general 
looked stolidly at a distant regiment swarm- 
ing slowly up the hill through rough under- 
growth, like a torn and draggled cloud of 
blue smoke; the captain appeared not to have 
observed him. Presently the captain spoke, 
slowly and with apparent effort:— 

‘‘On the next ridge, did you say, sir? 
Are the guns near the house?’”’ 

*‘Ah, you have been over this road before! 
Directly at the house.”’ 

‘‘And it is—necessary—to engage them? 
The order is imperative ?’’ 

His voice was husky and broken. He was 
visibly paler. The colonel was astonished 
and mortified. He stole a glance at the com- 
mander. In that set, immobile face was no 
sign; it was as hard as bronze. A moment 
later the general rode away, followed by his 
staff and escort. The colonel, humiliated 
and indignant, was about to order Captain 
Coulter in arrest, when the latter spoke a few 
words in a low tone to his bugler, saluted, and 
rode straight forward into the Notch, where, 
presently, at the summit of the road, his field 


t10) THE AFFAIR AT COULTER’S NOTCH. 


glass at his eyes, he showed against the sky, 
he and his horse, sharply defined and motion- 
less as an equestrian statue. The bugler had 
dashed down the road in the opposite direc- 
tion at headlong speed and disappeared 
behind a wood. Presently his bugle was 
heard singing in the cedars, and in an incred- 
ibly short time a single gun with its caisson, 
each drawn by six horses and manned by its 
full complement of gunners, came bounding 
and banging up the grade in a storm of dust, 
unlimbered under cover, and was run forward 
by hand to the fatal crest among the dead 
horses. A gesture of the captain’s arm, some 
strangely agile movements of the men in load- 
ing, and almost before the troops along the 
way had ceased to hear the rattle of the 
wheels, a great white cloud sprang forward 
down the slope, and with a deafening re- 
port the affair at Coulter’s Notch had begun. 

It is not intended to relate in detail the 
progress and incidents of that ghastly con- 
test—a contest without vicissitudes, its alter- 
nations only different degrees of despair. 
Almost at the instant when Captain Coulter’s 
gun blew its challenging cloud twelve answer- 
ing clouds rolled upward from among the | 
trees about the plantation house, a deep mul- 


| eae 
" 


THE AFFAIR AT COULTER'S NOTCH. IIt 


tiple report roared back like a broken echo, 
and thenceforth to the end the Federal can- 
noneers fought their hopeless battle in an at- 
mosphere of living iron whose thoughts were 
lightnings and whose deeds were death. 

Unwilling to see the efforts which he could 
not aid and the slaughter which he could not 
stay, the colonel had ascended the ridge at a 
point a- quarter of a mile to the left, whence 
the Notch, itself invisible but pushing up suc- 
cessive masses of smoke, seemed the crater 
of a volcano in thundering eruption. With 
his glass he watched the enemy’s guns, noting 
as he could the effects of Coulter’s fire—if 
Coulter still lived to direct it. He saw that 
the Federal gunners, ignoring the enemy’s 
pieces, whose position could be determined by 
their smoke only, gave their whole attention 
to the one which maintained its place in the 
open—the lawn in front of the house, with 
which it was accurately in line. Over and 
about that hardy piece the shells exploded at 
intervals of a few seconds. Some exploded 
in the house, as could be seen by thin ascen- 
sions of smoke from the breached roof. Fig- 
ures of prostrate men and horses were plainly 
visible, 


112. THE AFFAIR AT COULTER'S NOTCH. 


“If our fellows are doing such good work 
with a single gun,” said the colonel to an 
aide who happened to be nearest, ‘‘they must 
be suffering like the devil from twelve. Go 
down and present the commander of that 
piece with my congratulations on the accu- 
racy of his fire.”’ 

Turning to his adjutant-general he said, 
**Did you observe Coulter’s damned reluc- 
tance to obey orders ?’’ 

‘*Yes, sir, I did.’’ 

‘‘Well, say nothing about it, please. I 
don’t think the general will care to make any 
accusations. He will probably have enough 
to do in explaining his own connection with 
this uncommon way of amusing the rear 
guard of a retreating enemy.”’ 

A young officer approached from below, 
climbing breathless up the acclivity. Almost 
before he had saluted, he gasped out:— 

‘Colonel, I am directed by Colonel Har- 
mon to say that the enemy’s guns are within 
easy reach of our rifles, and most of them 
visible from various points along the ridge.’’ 

The brigade commander looked at him 
without a trace of interest in his expression. 
‘‘T know it,’’ he said quietly. 

The young adjutant was visibly embarrassed, 


THE AFFAIR AT COULTER'S NOTCH. 112 


**Colonel Harmon would like to have per- 
mission to silence those guns,’’ he stammered. 
**So should I,’’ the colonel said in the 
same tone. ‘‘Present my compliments to 
Colonel Harmon and say to him that the 
general’s orders not to fire are still in force.’ 
The adjutant saluted and retired. The 
colonel ground his heel into the earth and 
turned to look again at the enemy’s guns. 

“Colonel,” said the adjutant-general, ‘‘I 
don’t know that I ought to say anything, but 
there is something wrong in all this. Do you 
happen to know that Captain Coulter is from 
the South?”’ 

‘*No; was he, indeed?’’ 

“T heard that last summer the division 
which the general then commanded was in 
the vicinity of Coulter's home—camped 
there for weeks, and——’’ 

‘‘Listen!’’ said the colonel, interrupting 
with an upward gesture. ‘‘Do you hear 
that ?” 

‘*That’’ was the silence of the Federal 
gun. The staff, the orderlies, the lines of 
infantry behind the crest—all had ‘‘heard,’’ 
and were looking curiously in the direction 
of the crater, whence no smoke now as- 
cended except desultory cloudlets from the 

8 


1I4. THE AFFAIR AT COULTER S NOTCH. 


enemy’s shells. Then came the blare of a 
bugle, a faint rattle of wheels; a minute 
later the sharp reports recommenced with 
double activity. The demolished gun had 
been replaced with a sound one. 

‘*Yes,’’ said the adjutant-general, resum- 
ing his narrative, ‘‘the general made the 
acquaintance of Coulter’s family. There 
was trouble—I don’t know the exact nature 
of it—something about Coulter’s wife. She 
is a red-hot. Secessionist, as they all are, 
except Coulter himself, but she is a good 
wife and high-bred lady. There was a com- 
plaint to army headquarters. The general 
was transferred to this division. It is odd 
that Coulter’s battery should afterward have 
been assigned to it.” 

The colonel had risen from the rock upon 
which they had been sitting. His eyes were 
blazing with a generous indignation. 

‘*See here, Morrison,’’ said he, looking 
his gossiping staff officer straight in the 
face, “did you get that story from a gentle- 
man or a liar?’”’ 

‘fT don’t want to say how I got it, Colonel, 
unless it is necessary’’—he was blushing a 
trifle—‘‘but I’ll stake my life upon its truth 
in the main,”’ 


THE AFFAIR AT COULTER'S NOTCH. 115 


The colonel turned toward a small knot 
of officers some distance away. ‘‘Lieuten- 
ant Williams!’’ he shouted. 

One of the officers detached himself from 
the group, and, coming forward, saluted, say- 
ing: “‘Pardon me, Colonel, I thought you 
had been informed. Williams is dead down 
there by the gun. What can I do, sir?’’ 

Lieutenant Williams was the aide who had 
had the pleasure of conveying to the officer 
in charge of the gun his brigade command- 
er’s congratulations. 

**Go,’’ said the colonel, ‘‘and direct the 
withdrawal of that gun instantly. Hold! I'll 
go myself.” 

He strode down the declivity toward the 
rear of the Notch at a break-neck pace, over 
rocks and through brambles, followed by 
his little retinue in tumultuous disorder. At 
the foot of the declivity they mounted their 
waiting animals and took to the road at a 
lively trot, round a bend and into the Notch. 
The spectacle which they encountered there 
was appalling. 

Within that defile, barely broad enough 
for a single gun, were piled the wrecks of 
no fewer than four. They had noted the 
silencing of only the last one disabled—there 


116 THE AFFAIR AT COULTER’S NOTCH. 


had been a lack of men to replace it quickly. 
The débris lay on both sides of the road; the 
men had managed to keep an open way be- 
tween, through which the fifth piece was now 
firing. The men?—they looked like demons 
of the pit! All were hatless, all stripped to 
the waist, their reeking skins black with 
blotches of powder and spattered with gouts 
of blood. They worked like madmen, with 
rammer and cartridge, lever and lanyard. 
They set their swollen shoulders and bleeding 
hands against the wheels at each recoil and 
heaved the heavy gun back to its place. 
There were no commands; in that awful 
environment of whooping shot, exploding 
shells, shrieking fragments of iron, and flying 
splinters of wood, none could have been 
heard. Officers, if officers there were, were 
indistinguishable; all worked together—each 
while he lasted—governed by the eye. 
When the gun was sponged, it was loaded; 
when loaded, aimed and fired. The colonel 
observed something new to his military experi- 
ence—something horrible and unnatural: the 
gun was bleeding at the mouth! In temporary 
default of water, the man sponging had 
dipped his sponge in a pool of his comrades’ 
blood. In all this work there was no clash- 


THE AFFAIR AT COULTER’S NOTCH. I17 


ing; the duty of the instant was obvious. 
When one fell, another, looking a trifle 
cleaner, seemed to rise from the earth in the 
dead man’s tracks, to fall in his turn. 

With the ruined guns lay the ruined men © 
—alongside the wreckage, under it and atop 
of it; and back down the road—a ghastly 
procession!—crept on hands and knees such 
of the wounded as were able to move. The 
colonel—he had compassionately sent his 
cavalcade to the right about—had to ride 
over those who were entirely dead in order 
not to crush those who were partly alive. 
Into that hell he tranquilly held his way, 
rode up alongside the gun, and, in the ob- 
scurity of the last discharge, tapped upon the 
cheek the man holding the rammer—who 
straightway fell, thinking himself killed. A 
fiend seven times damned sprang out of the 
smoke to take his place, but paused and 
gazed up at the mounted officer with an 
unearthly regard, his teeth flashing between 
his black lips, his eyes, fierce and expanded, 
burning like coals beneath his bloody brow. 
The colonel made an authoritative gesture 
and pointed to the rear. The fiend bowed 
in token of obedience. It was Captain 
Coulter. 


IIS THE AFFAIR AT COULTER’S NOTCH. 


Simultaneously with the colonel’s arrest- 
ing sign, silence fell upon the whole field of 
action. The procession of missiles no longer 
streamed into that defile of death; the enemy 
also had ceased firing. His army had been 
gone for hours, and the commander of his 
rear guard, who had held his position peri- 
lously long in hope to silence the Federal 
fire, at that strange moment had silenced his 
own. ‘‘I was not aware of the breadth of 
my authority,’’ thought the colonel, face- 
tiously, riding forward to the crest to see 
what had really happened. 

An hour later his brigade was in bivouac 
on the enemy’s ground, and its idlers were 
examining, with something of awe, as the 
faithful inspect a saint’s relics, a score of 
straddling dead horses and three disabled 
guns, all spiked. The fallen men had been 
carried away; their crushed and broken bodies 
would have given too great satisfaction. 

Naturally, the colonel established himself 
and his military family in the plantation 
house. It was somewhat shattered, but it 
was better than the open air. The furniture 
was greatly deranged and broken. The 
walls and ceilings were knocked away here 
and there, and there was a lingering odor of 


THE AFFAIR AT COULTER’S NOTCH. I19 


powder smoke everywhere. The beds, the 
closets of women’s clothing, the cupboards 
were not greatly damaged. The new ten- 
ants for a night made themselves comfort- 
able, and the practical effacement of Coul- 
ter’s battery supplied them with an interest- - 
ing topic. 

During supper that evening an orderly of 
the escort-showed himself into the dining 
room and asked permission to speak to the 
colonel. 

‘‘What is it, Barbour?’’ said that officer 
pleasantly, having overheard the request. 

‘Colonel, there is something wrong in the 
cellar; I don’t know what—somebody there. 
I was down there rummaging about.”’ 

‘*T will go down and see,”’ said a staff offi- 
cer, rising. 

**So will I,’’ the colonel said; ‘‘let the 
others remain. Lead on, orderly.’’ 

They took a candle from the table and de- 
scended the cellar stairs, the orderly in visi- 
ble trepidation. The candle made but a 
feeble light, but presently, as they advanced, 
its narrow circle of illumination revealed a 
human figure seated on the ground against 
the black stone wall which they were skirting, 
its knees elevated, its head bowed sharply 


120 THE AFFAIR AT COULTER'S NOTCH. 


forward. The face, which should have been 
seen in profile, was invisible, for the man was 
bent so far forward that his long hair con- 
cealed it; and, strange to relate, the beard, 
of a much darker hue, fell in a great tangled 
mass and lay along the ground at his feet. 
They involuntarily paused; then the colonel, 
taking the candle from the orderly’s shaking 
hand, approached the man and attentively 
considered him. The long dark beard was 
the hair of a woman—dead. The dead 
woman clasped in her arms a dead babe. 
Both were clasped in the arms of the man, 
pressed against his breast, against his lips. 
There was blood in the hair of the woman; 
there was blood in the hair of the man. A 
yard away lay an infant’s foot. It was near 
an irregular depression in the beaten earth 
which formed the cellar’s floor—a fresh ex- 
cavation with a convex bit of iron, having 
jagged edges, visible in one of the sides. 
The colonel held the light as high as he 
could. The floor of the room above was 
broken through, the splinters pointing at all 
angles downward. ‘‘This casemate is not 
bomb-proof,’’ said the colonel gravely; it 
did not occur to him that his summing up of 
the matter had any levity in it. 


THE AFFAIR AT COULTER'S NOTCH. 121 


They stood about the group awhile in si- 
lence; the staff officer was thinking of his 
unfinished supper, the orderly of what might 
possibly be in one of the casks on the other 
side of the cellar. Suddenly the man, whom 
they had thought dead, raised his head and 
gazed tranquilly into their faces. His com- 
plexion was coal black; the cheeks were ap- 
parently tattooed in irregular sinuous lines 
from the eyes downward. The lips, too, were 
white, like those of a stage negro. There 
was blood upon his forehead. 

The staff officer drew back a pace, the or- 
derly two paces. 

‘‘What are you doing here, my man?” 
said the colonel, unmoved. 

“‘This house belongs to me, sir,’’ was the 
reply, civilly delivered. 

‘To you? Ah, Isee! And these?’’ 

‘*My wife and child. I am Captain Coul- 
ter.” 


Pe 
WARE eS Ex 


Fn Sh 


Fy Sates a 


al 


A TOUGH TUSSLE. 


QNE night in the autumn of 1861 a man 

sat alone in the heart of a forest in 
Western Virginia. The region was then, and 
still is, one of the wildest on the continent 
—the Cheat Mountain country. There was 
no lack of people close at hand, however; 
within two miles of where the man sat was 
the now silent camp of a whole Federal 
brigade. Somewhere about—it might be 
still nearer—was a force of the enemy, the 
numbers unknown. It was this uncertainty 
as to its numbers and position that ac- 
counted for the man’s presence in that lonely 
spot; he was a young officer of a Federal 
infantry regiment, and his business there was 
to guard his sleeping comrades in the camp 
against a surprise. He was in command of a 
detachment of men constituting a_ picket 
guard. These men he had stationed just at 
nightfall in an irregular line, determined by 
the nature of the ground, several hundred 


(123) 


124 A TOUGH TUSSLE. 


yards in front of where henowsat. The line 
ran through the forest, among the rocks and 
laurel thickets, the men fifteen or twenty 
paces apart, all in concealment and under 
injunction of strict silence and unremitting 
vigilance. In four hours, if nothing oc- 
curred, they would be relieved by a fresh 
detachment from the reserve now resting in 
care of its captain some distance away to 
the left and rear. Before stationing his men 
the young officer of whom we are speaking 
had pointed out to his two sergeants the spot 
at which he would be found in case it should 
be necessary to consult him, or if his presence 
at the front line should be required. 

It was a quiet enough spot—the fork of 
an old wood road, on the two branches .of 
which, prolonging themselves deviously for- 
ward in the dim moonlight, the sergeants 
were themselves stationed, a few paces in 
rear of the line. If driven sharply back by 
a sudden onset of the enemy—and pickets 
are not expected to make a stand after firing 
—the men would come into the converg- 
ing roads, and, naturally following them to 
their point of intersection, could be rallied 
and ‘‘formed.”’ In his small way the young 
lieutenant was something of a strategist; if 


- ~~ oe 
. a 

Lt 
‘ F . 


ae 


A TOUGH TUSSLE. 125 


Napoleon had planned as intelligently at 
Waterloo, he would have won the battle and 
been overthrown later. 

Second Lieutenant Brainerd Byring was 
a brave and efficient officer, young and com- 
paratively inexperienced as he was in the 
business of killing his fellow-men. He had 
enlisted in the very first days of the war as a 
private, with no military knowledge whatever, 
had been made first sergeant of his company 
on account of his education and engaging 
manner, and had been lucky enough to lose 
his captain by a Confederate bullet; in the 
resulting promotions he had got a com- 
mission. He had been in several engage- 
ments, such as they were—at Philippi, Rich 
Mountain, Carrick’s Ford and Greenbrier— 
and had borne himself with such gallantry as 
not to attract attention of his superior officers. 
The exhilaration of battle was agreeable to 
him, but the sight of the dead, with their 
clay faces, blank eyes, and stiff bodies, which, 
when not unnaturally shrunken, were un- 
naturally swollen, had always intolerably 
affected him. He felt toward them a kind of 
reasonless antipathy which was something 
more than the physical and spiritual repug- 
nance common to us all. Doubtless this 


126 A TOUGH TUSSLE. 


feeling was due to his unusually acute sensi- 
bilities—his keen sense of the beautiful, which 
these hideous things outraged. Whatever 
may have been the cause, he could not look 
upon a dead body without a loathing which 
had in it an element of resentment. What 
others have respected as the dignity of death 
had to him no existence—was altogether un- 
thinkable. Death was a thing to be hated. 
It was not picturesque, it had no tender and 
solemn side—a dismal thing, hideous in all 
its manifestations and suggestions. Lieuten- 
ant Byring was a braver man than anybody 
knew, for nobody knew his horror of that 
which he was ever ready to encounter. 
Having posted his men, instructed his 
sergeants, and retired to his station, he seated 
himself on a log, and, with senses all alert, 
began his vigil. Forgreaterease he loosened 
his sword belt, and, taking his heavy revolver 
from his holster, laid it on the log beside him. 
He felt very comfortable, though he hardly 
gave the fact a thought, so intently did he 
listen for any sound from the front which 
might have a menacing significance—a shout, 
a shot, or the footfall of one of his sergeants 
coming to apprise him of something worth 
knowing. From the vast, invisible ocean of 


A TOUGH TUSSLE 127 


moonlight overhead fell, here and there, a 
slender, broken stream that seemed to plash 
against the intercepting branches and trickle 
to earth, forming small white pools among 
the clumps of laurel. But these leaks were 
few and served only to accentuate the black- 
ness of his environment, which his imagina- 
tion found it easy to people with all manner 
of unfamiliar shapes, menacing, uncanny, or 
merely grotesque. 

He to whom the portentous conspiracy of 
night and solitude and silence in the heart of 
a great forest is not an unknown experience 
needs not to be told what another world it 
all is—how even the most commonplace and 
familiar objects take on another character. 
The trees group themselves differently; they 
draw closer together, as if in fear. The very 
silence has another quality than the silence 
of the day. Andit is fullof half-heard whis- 
pers, whispers that startle—ghosts of sounds 
long dead. There are living sounds, too, 
such as are never heard under other condi- 
tions: notes of strange night birds, the cries 
of small animals in sudden encounters with 
stealthy foes, or in their dreams, a rustling 
in the dead leaves—it may be the leap of a 
wood rat, it may be the footstep of a panther. 


128 A TOUGH TUSSLE. 


What caused the breaking of that twig?— 
what the low, alarmed twittering in that 
bushful of birds? There are sounds without 
a name, forms without substance, translations 
in space of objects which have not been seen 
to move, movements wherein nothing is ob- 
served to change its place. Ah, children of 
the sunlight and the gaslight, how little you 
know of the world in which you live! 
Surrounded at a little distance by armed 
and watchful friends, Byring felt utterly alone. 
Yielding himself to the solemn and. myste- 
rious spirit of the time and place, he had 
forgotten the nature of his connection with 
the visible and audible aspects and phases of 
the night. The forest was boundless; men 
and the habitations of men did not exist. 
The universe was one primeval mystery of 
darkness, without form and void, himself the 
sole dumb questioner of its eternal secret. 
Absorbed in the thoughts born of this mood, 
he suffered the time to slip away unnoted. 
Meantime the infrequent patches of white 
light lying amongst the undergrowth had 
undergone changes of size, form, and place, 
In one of them near by, just at the roadside, 
his eye fell upon an object which he had not 
previously observed. It was almost before 


A TOUGH TUSSLE. 129 


his face as he sat; he could have sworn that 
it had not before been there. It was partly 
covered in shadow, but he could see that it 
was a human figure. Instinctively he ad- 
justed the clasp of his sword belt and laid 
hold of his pistol—again he was in a world 
of war, by occupation an assassin. 

The figure did not move. Rising, pistol 
in hand, he approached. The figure lay 
upon its back, its upper part in shadow, but 
standing above it and looking down upon the 
face, he saw that it was a dead body. He 
shuddered and turned from it with a feeling 
of sickness and disgust, resumed his seat 
upon the log, and, forgetting military pru- 
dence, struck a match and lit a cigar. In 
the sudden blackness that followed the ex- 
tinction of the flame he felt a sense of re- 
lief; he could no longer see the object of 
his aversion. Nevertheless, he kept his eyes 
set in that direction until it appeared again 
with growing distinctness. It seemed to have 
moved a trifle nearer. 

“‘Damn the thing!’’ he muttered. ‘‘ What 
does it want?’’ 

It did not appear to be in need of anything 
but a soul. 

Byring turned away his eyes and began 

9 


430 A TOUGH TUSSLE. 


humming a tune, but he broke off in the 
middle of a bar and looked at the dead man. 
Its presence annoyed him, though he could 
hardly have had a quieter neighbor. He 
was conscious, too, of a vague, indefinable 
feeling which was new to him. It was not 
fear but rather a sense of the supernatural— _ 
in which he did not at all believe. 

‘‘T have inherited it,’’ he said to himself. 
**T suppose it will require a thousand years— 
perhaps ten thousand—for humanity to out- 
grow this feeling. Where and when did it 
originate? Away back, probably, in what is 
called the cradle of the human race—the 
plains of Central Asia. What we inherit as 
a superstition our barbarous ancestors must 
have heid as a reasonable conviction. Doubt- 
less they believed themselves justified by facts 
whose nature we cannot even conjecture in 
thinking a dead body a malign thing en- 
dowed with some strange power of mischief, 
with perhaps a willand a purpose to exert it. 
Possibly they had some awful form of religion 
of which that was one of the chief doctrines, 
sedulously taught by their priesthood, just as 
ours teach the immortality of the soul. As 
the Aryan moved westward to and through 
the Caucasus passes and spread over Europe, 


A TOUGH TUSSLE, 131 


new conditions of life must have resulted in 
the formulation of new religions. The old 
belief in the malevolence of the dead body 
was lost from the creeds, and even perished 
from tradition, but it left its heritage of terror, 
which is transmitted from generation to gen- 
eration—is as much a part of us as our blood 
and bones.’’ 

In following out his thought he had for- 
gotten that which suggested it; but now his 
eye fell again upon the corpse. The shadow 
had now altogether uncovered it. He saw 
the sharp profile, the chin in the air, the 
whole face, ghastly white in the moonlight. 
The clothing was gray, the uniform of a Con- 
federate soldier. The coat and waistcoat, un- 
buttoned, had fallen away on each side, ex- 
posing the white shirt. The chest seemed 
unnaturally prominent, but the abdomen had 
sunk in, leaving asharp projection at the line 
of the lower ribs. The arms were extended, 
the left knee was thrust upward. The whole 
posture impressed Byring as having been 
studied with a view to the horrible. 

‘*Bah!’’ he exclaimed; ‘‘he was an actor— 
he knows how to be dead.”’ 

He drew away his eyes, directing them 
resolutely along one of the roads leading to 


132 A TOUGH TUSSLE 


the front, and resumed his philosophizing 
where he had left off. 

‘‘It may be that our Central Asian an- 
cestors had not the custom of burial. In 
that case it is easy to understand their fear 
of the dead, who really were a menace and 
an evil. They bred pestilences. Children 
were taught to avoid the places where they 
lay, and to run away if by inadvertence they 
came near a corpse. I think, indeed, I'd 
better go away from this chap.’’ 

He half rose to do so, then. remembered 
that he told his men in front, and the officer 
in the rear who was to relieve him, that he 
could at any time be found at that spot. It 
was a matter of pride, too.’ If he abandoned 
his post, he feared they would think he feared 
the corpse. He was no coward, and he was 
not going to incur anybody’s ridicule. So 
he again seated. himself, and, to prove his 
courage, looked boldly at the body. The 
right arm—the one farthest from him—was 
now in shadow. He could barely see the 
hand which, he had before observed, lay at 
the root of a clump of laurel. There had 
been no change, a fact which gave him a cer- 
tain comfort, he could not have said why. 
He did not at once remove his eyes; that 


A TOUGH TUSSLE. 133 


which we do not wish to see has a strange 
fascination, sometimes irresistible. Of the 


“woman who covers her face with her hands, 


and looks between the fingers, let it be said 
that the wits have dealt with her not alto- 
gether justly. 

Byring suddenly became conscious of a 
pain in his right hand. He withdrew his 
eyes from his enemy and looked at it. He 
was grasping the hilt of his drawn sword so 
tightly that it hurt him. He observed, too, 
that he was leaning forward in a strained at- 
titude—crouching like a gladiator ready to 
spring at the throat of an antagonist. His 
teeth were clenched, and he was breathing 
hard. This matter was soon set right, and as 
his muscles relaxed and he drew a long breath, 
he felt keenly enough the ludicrousness of the 
incident. It affected him to laughter. Heav- 
ens! what sound was that?—what mindless 
devil was uttering an unholy glee in mockery 
of human merriment? He sprang to his 
feet and looked about him, not recognizing 
his own laugh. 

He could no longer conceal from himself 
the horrible fact of his cowardice; he was 
thoroughly frightened! He would have 
run from the spot, but his legs refused their 


134 A TOUGH TUSSLE. 


office; they gave way beneath him, and he 
sat again upon the log, violently trembling. 
His face was wet, his whole body bathed in a 
chill perspiration. He could not even cry 
out. Distinctly he heard behind him a 
stealthy tread, as of some wild animal, and 
dared not look over his shoulder. Had the 
soulless living joined forces with the soulless 
dead ?—was it an animal? Ah, if he could 
but be assured of that! But by no effort of 
will could he now unfix his gaze from the 
face of the dead man. 

I repeat that Lieutenant Byring was a 
brave and intelligent man. But what would 
you have? Shall a man cope, single-handed, 
with so monstrous an alliance as that of night 
and solitude and silence and the dead ?— while 
an incalculable host of his own ancestors 
shriek into the ear of his spirit their cow- 
ard counsel, sing their doleful death songs 
in his heart and disarm his very blood of 
all its iron? The odds are too great—cour- 
age was not made for such rough use as that. 

One sole conviction now had the man in 
possession: that the body had moved. It lay 
nearer to the edge of its plot of light—there 
could be no doubt of it. It had also moved 
its arms, for, look, they are both in the 


A TOUGH TUSSLE 135 


shadow! A breath of cold air struck Byring 
full in the face; the branches of trees above 
him stirred and moaned. A strongly-defined 
shadow passed across the face of the dead, 
left it luminous, passed back upon it and left 
it half obscured. The horrible thing was vis- 
ibly moving. At that momenta single shot 
rang out upon the picket line—a lonelier and 
louder, though more distant, shot than ever 
had been heard by mortalear! It broke the 
spell of that enchanted man; it slew the si- 
lence and the solitude, dispersed the hinder- 
ing host from Central Asia, and released his 
modern manhood. With a cry like that of 
some great bird pouncing upon its prey, he 
sprang forward, hot-hearted for action! 

Shot after shot now came from the front. 
There were shoutings and confusion, hoof 
beats and desultory cheers. Away to the 
rear, in the sleeping camp, was a singing of 
bugles and a grumble of drums. Pushing 
through the thickets on either side the roads 
came the Federal pickets, in full retreat, fir- 
ing backward at random as they ran. A 
straggling group that had followed back one 
of the roads, as instructed, suddenly sprang 
away into the bushes as half a hundred horse- 
men thundered by them, striking wildly with 


136 A TOUGH TUSSLE, 


their sabers as they passed. At headlong 
speed these mounted madmen shot past the 
spot where Byring had sat, and vanished 
round an angle of the road, shouting and 
firing their pistols. A moment later there 
was a roar of musketry, followed by dropping 
shots—they had encountered the reserve 
guard in line; and back they came in dire 
confusion, with here and there an empty sad- 
dle and many a maddened horse, bullet-stung, 
snorting and plunging with pain. It was all 
over—‘‘an affair of outposts.”’ 

The line was re-established with fresh men, 
the roll called, the stragglers were reformed. 
The Federal commander, with a part of his 
staff, imperfectly clad, appeared upon the 
scene, asked a few questions, looked exceed- 
ingly wise, and retired. After standing at 
arms for an hour, the brigade in camp 
‘‘sworea prayer or two’’ and went to bed. 

Early the next. morning a fatigue party, 
commanded by a captain and accompanied 
by a surgeon, searched the ground for dead 
and wounded. At the fork of the road, a lit- 
tle to one side, they found two bodies lying 
close together—that of a Federal officer and 
that of a Confederate private. The officer had 
died of a sword-thrust through the heart, but 


a ae 
Be 


A TOUGH TUSSLE. 137 


not, apparently, until he had inflicted upon 
his enemy no fewer than five dreadful wounds. 
The dead officer lay on his face in a pool of 
blood, the weapon still in his breast. They 
turned him on his back and the surgeon re- 
moved it. 

“Gad !’’ said the captain—‘‘it is Byring!”’ 
—adding, with a glance at the other, ‘‘ They 
had a tough tussle.”’ 

The surgeon was examining the sword. It 
was that of a line officer of Federal infantry 
—exactly like the one worn by the captain. 
It was, in fact, Byring’s own. The only other 
weapon discovered was an undischarged re- 
volver in the dead officer’s belt. 

The surgeon laid down the sword and ap- 
proached the other body. It was frightfully 
gashed and stabbed, but there was no blood. 
He took hold of the left foot and tried to 
straighten the leg. In the effort the body 
was displaced. The dead do not wish to be 
moved when comfortable—it protested with 
a faint, sickening odor. Where it had lain 
were a few maggots, manifesting an imbecile 
activity. 

The surgeon looked at the captain. The 
captain looked at the surgeon. 


THE COUP DE GRACE. 


HE fighting had been hard and continuous, 
that was attested by all the senses. The 
very taste of battle was in the air. All was 
now over; it remained only to succor the 
wounded and bury the dead—to ‘‘tidy up a 
bit,” as the humorist of a burying squad put 
it. A good deal of ‘‘ tidying up”’ was re- 
quired. As far as one could see through the 
forest, between the splintered trees, lay wrecks 
of men and horses. Among them moved the 
stretcher-bearers, gathering and carrying away 
the few who showed signs of life. Most of 
the wounded had died of exposure while the 
right to minister to their wants was in dispute. 
It is an army regulation that the wounded 
must wait; the best way to care for them is to 
win the battle. It must be confessed that 
victory is a distinct advantage to a man re- 
quiring attention, but many do not live to 
avail themselves of.it. 
The dead were collected in groups of a 


(139) 


140 THE COUP DE GRACE. 


dozen or a score and laid side by side in rows 
while the trenches were dug to receive them. 
Some, found at too great a distance from 
these rallying points, were buried where they 
lay. There was little attempt at identifica- 
tion, though in most cases, the burying parties 
being detailed to glean the same ground 
which they had assisted to reap, the names of 
the victorious dead were known and listed. 
The enemy’s fallen had to be content with 
counting. But of that they got enough: many 
of them were counted several times, and the 
total, as given in the official report of the vic- 
torious commander, denoted rather a hope 
than a result. 

At some little distance from the spot where 
one of the burying parties had established 
its ‘‘ bivousc of the dead,”’ a man in the uni- 
form of a Federal officer stood leaning against 
atree. From his feet upward to his neck his 
attitude was that of weariness reposing; but 
he turned his head uneasily from side to side; 
his mind was apparently not at rest. He was 
perhaps uncertain in what direction to go; he 
was not likely to remain long where he was, 
for already the level rays of the setting sun 
struggled redly through the open spaces of 
the wood, and the weary soldiers were quit- 


THE COUP DE GRACE. 141 


ting their task for the day. He would hardly 
make a night of it alone there among the 
dead. Nine men in ten whom you meet af- 
ter a battle inquire the way to some fraction 
of the army—as if anyone could know. 
Doubtless this officer was lost. After resting 
himself a moment, he would follow one of the 
retiring burial squads. 

When all were gone, he walked straight 
away into the forest toward the red west, its 
light staining his face like blood. The air of 
confidence with which he now strode along 
showed that he was on familiar ground; he 
had recovered his bearings. The dead on his 
right and on his left were unregarded as he 
passed. An occasional low moan from some 
sorely-stricken wretch whom the relief parties 
had not reached, and who would have to pass 
a comfortless night beneath the stars with his 
thirst to keep him company, was equally un- 
heeded. What, indeed, could the officer have 
done, being no surgeon and having no water? 

At the head of a shallow ravine, a mere de- 
pression of the ground, lay a small group of 
bodies. He saw, and, swerving suddenly 
from his course, walked rapidly toward them. 
Scanning each one sharply as he passed, he 
stopped at last above one which lay at a slight 


142 THE COUP DE GRACE. 


remove from the others, near a clump of 
small trees. He looked at it narrowly. It 
seemed to stir. He stooped and laid his hand 
upon its face. It screamed. 

The officer was Captain Downing Madwell, 
of a Massachusetts regiment of infantry, a 
daring and intelligent soldier, an honorable 
man. | 

In the regiment were two brothers named 
Halcrow—Caffal and Creede Halcrow. Caffal 
Halcrow wasa sergeant in Captain Madwell’s 
company, and these two men, the sergeant 
and the captain, were devoted friends. In so 
far as disparity of rank, difference in duties, 
and considerations of military discipline would 
permit, they were commonly together. They 
had, indeed, grown up together from child- 
hood. A habit of the heart is not easily 
broken off. Caffal Halcrow had nothing mili- 
tary in his taste or disposition, but the thought 
of separation from his friend was disagreeable; 
he enlisted in the company in which Madwell 
was second lieutenant. Each had taken two 
steps upward in rank, but between the high- 
est non-commissioned and the lowest com- 
missioned officer the social gulf is.deep and 
wide, and the old relation was maintained 
with difficulty and a difference. 


THE COUP DE GRACE. 143 


Creede Halcrow, the brother of Caffal, was 
the major of the regiment—a cynical, satur- 
nine man, between whom and Captain Mad- 
well there was a natural antipathy which 
circumstances had nourished and strengthened 
to an active animosity. But for the restrain- 
ing influence of their mutual relation to Caffal, 
these two patriots would doubtless have en- 
deavored to deprive their country of one 
another’s services. 

At the opening of the battle that morning, 
the regiment was performing outpost duty a 
mile away from the main army. It was at- 
tacked and nearly surrounded in the forest, 
but stubbornly held its ground. During a 
lull in the fighting, Major Halcrow came to 
Captain Madwell. The two exchanged 
formal salutes, and the major said: ‘‘ Captain, 
the colonel directs that you push your com- 
pany to the head of this ravine and hold your 
place there until recalled. I need hardly 
apprise you of the dangerous character of the 
movement, but if you wish, you can, I sup- 
pose, turn over the command to your first 
lieutenant. I was not, however, directed to 
authorize the substitution; it is merely a sug- 
gestion of my own, unofficially made.”’ 

To this deadly insult Captain Madwell 
coolly replied:— 


144 THE COUP DE GRACE, 


‘*Sir, I invite you to accompany the move- 
ment. A mounted officer would be a con- 
spicuous mark, and I have long held the 
opinion that it would be better if you were 
dead.’’ 

The art of repartee was cultivated in mili- 
tary circles as early as 1862. 

A half hour later Captain Madwell’s com- 
pany was driven from its position at the head 
of the ravine, with a loss of one-third its 
number. Among the fallen was Sergeant 
Halcrow. The regiment was soon afterward 
forced back to the main line, and at the close 
of the battle was miles away. The captain 
was now standing at the side of his subordi- 
nate and friend. 

Sergeant Halcrow was mortally hurt. His 
clothing was deranged; it seemed to have 
been violently torn apart, exposing the ab- 
domen. Some of the buttons of his jacket 
had been pulled off and lay on the ground 
beside him, and fragments of his other gar- 
ments were strewn about. His leather belt 
was parted, and had apparently been dragged 
from beneath him ashe lay. There had been 
no very great effusion of blood. -The only 
visible wound was a wide, ragged opening in 
the abdomen. It was defiled with earth and 


THE COUP DE GRACE. 145 


dead leaves. Protruding from it was a lacer- 
ated end of the small intestine. In all his 
experience Captain Madwell had not seen a 
wound likethis. He could neither conjecture 
how it was made nor explain the attendant 
circumstances—the strangely torn clothing, 
the parted belt, the besmirching of the white 
skin. He knelt and made a closer examina- 
tion. When he rose to his feet, he turned his 
eyes in various directions as if looking for an 
enemy. Fifty yards away, on the crest of a 
low, thinly-wooded hill, he saw several dark 
objects moving about among the fallen men— 
a herd of swine. One stood with its back to 
him, its shoulders sharply elevated. Its fore- 
feet were upon a human body, its head was 
depressed and invisible. The bristly ridge of 
its chine showed black against the red west. 
Captain Madwell drew away his eyes and 
fixed them again upon the thing which had 
been his friend. 

The man who had suffered these monstrous 
mutilations was alive. At intervals he moved 
his limbs; he moaned at every breath. He 
stared blankly into the face of his friend, and 
if touched screamed. In his giant agony he 
had torn up the ground on which he lay; his 
clenched hands were full of leaves and twigs 

10 


146 THE COUP DE GRACE. 


and earth. Articulate speech was beyond his 
power; it was impossible to know if he were 
sensible to anything but pain. The expression 
of his face was an appeal; his eyes were full 
of prayer. For what? 

There was no misreading that look; the 
captain had too frequently seen it in eyes of 
those whose lips had still the power to formu- 
late it by an entreaty for death. Consciously 
or unconsciously, this writhing fragment of 
humanity, this type and example of acute 
sensation, this handiwork of man and beast, 
this humble, unheroic Prometheus, was implor- 
ing everything, all, the whole non-ego, for 
the boon of oblivion. To the earth and the 
sky alike, to the trees, to the man, to what- 
ever took form in sense or consciousness, this 
incarnate suffering addressed its silent plea. 

For what, indeed ?—For that which we ac- 
cord to even the meanest creature without 
sense to demand it, denying it only to the 
wretched of our own race: for the blessed 
release, the rite of uttermost compassion, the 
coup de grace. 

Captain Madwell spoke the name of his 
friend. He repeated it over and over with- 
out effect until emotion choked his utterance. 
His tears plashed upon the livid face beneath 


THE COUP DE GRACE. 147 


his own and blinded himself. He saw noth- 
ing but a blurred and moving object, but the 
moans were more distinct than ever, inter- 
rupted at briefer intervals by sharper shrieks. 
He turned away, struck his hand upon his 
forehead, and strode from the spot. The 
swine, catching sight of him, threw up their 
crimson muzzles, regarding him suspiciously 
a second, and then, with a gruff, concerted 
grunt, raced away out of sight. A horse, its 
fore-leg splintered hotribly by a cannon shot, 
lifted its head sidewise from the ground and 
neighed piteously. Madwell stepped forward, 
drew his revolver and shot the poor beast 
between the eyes, narrowly observing its 
death struggle, which, contrary to his ex- — 
pectation, was violent and long; but at last it 
lay still. The tense muscles of its lips, which 
had uncovered the teeth in a horrible grin, 
relaxed; the sharp, clean-cut profile took on 
a look of profound peace and rest. 

Along the distant thinly-wooded crest to 
westward the fringe of sunset fire had now 
nearly burned itself out. The light upon the 
trunks of the trees had faded to a tender 
gray; the shadows were in their tops, like 
great dark birds aperch. The night was com- 
ing and there were miles of haunted forest 


148 THE COUP DE GRACE. 


between Captain Madwell and camp. Yet he 
stood there at the side of the dead animal, 
apparently lost to all sense of h's surround- 
ings. His eyes were bent upon the earth at 
his feet; his left hand hung loosely at his side, 
his right still held the pistol. Suddenly he 
lifted his face, turned it toward his dying 
friend, and walked rapidly back to his side. 
He knelt upon one knee, cocked the weapon, 
placed the muzzle against the man’s forehead, 
turned away his eyes and pulled the trigger. 
There was no report. He had used his last 
cartridge for the horse. The sufferer moaned 
and his lips moved convulsively. The froth 
that ran from them had a tinge of blood. 
Captain Madwell rose to his feet and 
drew his sword from the scabbard. He 
passed the fingers of his left hand along the 
edge from hilt to point. He held it out 
straight before him, as if to test his nerves. 
There was no visible tremor of the blade; 
the ray of bleak skylight that it reflected was 
steady and true. He stooped, and with his 
left hand tore away the dying man’s shirt, 
rose, and placed the point of the sword just 
over the heart. This time he did not with- 
draw his eyes. Grasping the hilt with both 
hands, he thrust downward with all his 


THE COUP DE GRACE, 149 


strength and weight. The blade sank into 
the man’s body—through his body into the 
earth; Captain Madwell came near falling 
forward upon his work. The dying man 
drew up his knees and at the same time threw 
his right arm across his breast and grasped 
the steel so tightly that the knuckles of the 
hand visibly whitened. By a violent but vain 
effort to withdraw the blade, the wound. was 
enlarged; a rill of blood escaped, running 
sinuously down into the deranged clothing. 
At that moment three men stepped silently 
forward from behind the clump of young 
trees which had concealed their approach. 
Two were hospital attendants and carried a 
stretcher. 
The third was Major Creede Halcrow. 


PARKER ADDERSON. PHILOSOPHER. 


; “PRISONER, what is your name? ”’ 

“As Iam to lose it at daylight to-mor- 
row morning, it is hardly worth concealing. 
Parker Adderson.”’ 

“Your rank?”’ 

**A somewhat humble one; commissioned 
officers are too precious to be risked in the 
perilous business of a spy. I am a sergeant.”’ 

“Of what regiment ?”’ 

‘* You must excuse me; if I answered that 
it might, for anything I know, give you an 
idea of whose forces are in your fro. Such 
knowledge as that is what I came into your 
lines to obtain, not to impart ”’ 

** You are not without wit.”’ 

‘“‘ If you have the patience to wait, you will 
find me dull enough to-morrow.”’ 

‘“‘ How do you know that you are to die 
to-morrow morning.’’ 

‘‘Among spies captured by night that is the 
custom. It is one of the nice observances of 

the profession.” 
(151) 


152 PARKER ADDERSON, PHILOSOPHER. 


The general so far laid aside the dignity 
appropriate to a Confederate officer of high 
rank and wide renown as to smile. But no 
one in his power and out of his favor would 
have drawn any happy augury from that out- 
ward and visible sign of approval. It was 
neither genial nor infectious; it did not com- 
municate itself to the other persons exposed 
to it—the caught spy who had provoked it 
and the armed guard who had brought him 
into the tent and now stood a little apart, 
watching his prisoner in the yellow candle- 
light. It was no part of that warrior’s duty 
to smile; he had been detailed for another 
purpose. The conversation was resumed; it 
was, in fact, a trial for a capital offense. 

‘You admit, then, that you are a spy—that 
you came into my camp disguised as you are, 
in the uniform of a Confederate soldier, to 
obtain information secretly regarding the 
numbers and disposition of my troops.”’ 

‘‘Regarding, particularly, their numbers. 
Their disposition I already knew. It is mo- 
rose.’ 

The general brightened again; the guard, 
with a severer sense of his responsibility, ac- 
centuated the austerity of his expression and 
stood a trifle more erect than before. Twirl- 


ae 


PARKER ADDERSON, PHILOSOPHER, 153 


ing his gray slouch hat round and round upon 
his forefinger, the spy took a leisurely sur- 
vey of his surroundings. They were simple 
enough. The tent was a common “wall 
tent,’’ about eight feet by ten in dimensions, 
lighted by a single tallow candle stuck into 
the haft of a bayonet, which was itself stuck 
into a pine table, at which the general sat, 
now busily writing and apparently forgetful of 
his unwilling guest. An old rag carpet cov- 
ered the earthen floor; an older hair trunk, 
a second chair, and a roll of blankets were 
about all else that the tent contained; in 
General Clavering’s command Confederate 
simplicity and penury of ‘‘ pomp and circum- 
stance,’’ had attained their highest develop- 
ment. Ona large nail driven into the tent 
pole at the entrance was suspended a sword 
belt supporting a long saber, a pistol in its 
holster, and, absurdly enough, a bowie knife. 
Of that most unmilitary weapon it was the gen- 
eral’s habit to explain that it was a cherished 
souvenir of the peaceful days when he was 
a civilian. 

It was a stormy night. The rain cascaded 
upon the canvas in torrents, with the dull, 
drum-like sound familiar to dwellers in tents. 
As the whooping blasts charged upon it the 


154 PARKER ADDERSON, PHILOSOPHER. 


frail structure shook and swayed and strained 
at its confining stakes and ropes. 

The general finished writing, folded the 
half sheet of paper, and spoke to the soldier 
guarding Adderson: ‘‘ Here, Tassman, take 
that to the adjutant general; then return.’’ 

‘‘And the prisoner, general?’’ said the 
soldier, saluting, with an inquiring glance in 
the direction of that unfortunate. 

‘‘Do as I said,” replied the officer, curtly. 

The soldier took the note and ducked him- 
self out of the tent. General Clavering 
turned his handsome, clean-cut face toward 
the Federal spy, looked him in the eyes, not 
unkindly, and said: ‘‘It isa bad night, my 
man.”’ 

‘*For me, yes.’’ 

“Do you guess what I have written?”’ 

‘‘Something worth reading, I dare say. 
And—perhaps it is my vanity—I venture to 
suppose that I am mentioned in it.’’ 

‘Yes; it a memorandum for an order to 
be read to the troops at revezlle concerning 
your execution. Also some notes for the 
guidance of the provost marshal in arrang- 
ing the details of that event.’ 

‘‘T hope, general, the spectacle will be in- 
telligently arranged, for I shall attend it my- 


self.’’ 


PARKER ADDERSON, PHILOSOPHER. 155 


‘‘Have you any arrangements of your own 
that you wish tomake? Do you wish to see 
a chaplain, for example?” 

‘*T could hardly secure a longer rest for 
myself by depriving him of somé of his.” 

**Good God, man! do you mean to go to 
your death with nothing but jokes upon your 
lips? Do you not know that this is a serious 
matter ?’”’ 

**How can I know that? I have never 
been dead in all my life. I have heard that 
death is a serious matter, but never from any 
of those who have experienced it.’’ 

The general was silent fora moment; the 
man interested, perhaps amused him—a type 
not previously encountered. 

' Death,’ he said, ‘‘is at least a loss—a 
loss of such happiness as we have, and of 
opportunities for more.”’ 

‘*A loss of which we will never be con- 
scious can be borne with composure and 
therefore expected without apprehension. 
You must have observed, general, that of 
all the dead men with whom it is your sol- 
dierly pleasure to strew your path, none show 
signs of regret.’’ 

‘“‘If the being dead is not a regrettable 
condition, yet the becoming so—the act of 


156 PARKER ADDERSON, PHILOSOPHER. 


dying—appears to be distinctly disagreeable 
in one who has not lost the power to feel.”’ 

‘*Pain is disagreeable, no doubt. I never 
suffer it without more or less discomfort. 
But he who lives longest is most exposed to 
it. What you call dying is simply the last 
pain—there is really no such thing as dying. 
Suppose, for illustration, that I attempt to 
ecape. You lift the revolver that you are 
courteously concealing in your lap, and—’’ 

The general blushed like a girl, then 
lauzhed softly, disclosing his brilliant teeth, 
made a slight inclination of his handsome 
head, and said nothing. . The spy continued: 
‘* You fire, and I have in my stomach what I 
did not swallow. I fall, but am not dead. 
After a half hour of agony I am dead. But 
at any given instant of that half hour I was 
either alive or dead. There is no transition 
period. 

‘When I am hanged to-morrow morning 
it will be quite the same; while conscious I 
shall be living; when dead, unconscious. Na- 
ture appears to have ordered the matter quite 
in my interest—the way that I should have 
ordered it myself. It is so simple,’’ he added 
with a smile, ‘‘that it seems hardly worth 
while to be hanged at all.’’ 


PARKER ADDERSON, PHILOSOPHER, 157 


At the finish of his remarks there was a 
long silence. The general sat impassive, 
looking into the man’s face, but apparently 
not attentive to what had been said. It was 
as if his eyes had mounted guard over the 
prisoner, while his mind concerned itself with 
other matters. Presently he drew a long, 
deep breath, shuddered, as one awakened 
from a dreadful dream, and exclaimed almost 
inaudibly: ‘‘ Death is horrible!’’—this man 
of death. 

** Tt was horrible to our savage ancestors,”’ 
said the spy, gravely, ‘‘ because they had not 
enough intelligence to dissociate the idea of 
consciousness from the idea of the physical 
forms in which it is manifested—as an even 
lower order of intelligence, that of the 
monkey, for example, may be unable to im- 
agine a house without inhabitants, and seeing 
a ruined hut fancies a suffering occupant. To 
us it is horrible because we have inherited the 
tendency to think it so, accounting for the no- 
tion by wild and fanciful theories of another 
world—as names of places give rise to leg- 
ends explaining them, and reasonless conduct 
to philosophies in justification. You can hang 
me, general, but there your power of evil 
ends; you cannot condemn me to heaven,’’ 


158 PARKER ADDERSON, PHILOSOPHER. 


The general appeared not to have heard; 
the spy’s talk had merely turned his thoughts 
into an unfamiliar channel, but there they 
pursued their will independently to conclu- 
sions. of their own. The storm had ceased, 
and something of the solemn spirit of the 
night had imparted itself to his reflections, 
giving them the somber tinge of a supernat- 
ural dread. Perhaps there was an element of 
prescience in it. ‘‘I should not like to die,”’ 
he said—‘‘ not to-night.” 

He was interrupted—if, indeed, he had in- 
tended to speak further—by the entrance of 
an officer of his staff, Captain Hasterlick, 
the provost-marshal. This recalled him to 
himself; the absent look passed away from 
his face. 

‘‘Captain,” he said, acknowledging the 
officer’s salute, ‘‘this man is a Yankee spy 
captured inside our lines with incriminating 
papers on him. He has confessed. How is 
the weather?”? _ 

‘‘The storm is over, sir, and the moon 
shining.”’ 

‘Good; take a file of men, conduct him 
at once to the parade ground, and shoot 
him.”’ 

A sharp cry broke from the spy’s lips, 


’ 


PARKER ADDERSON, PHILOSOPHER. -159 


He threw himself forward, thrust out his 
neck, expanded his eyes, clenched his hands. 
‘* Good God !’’ he cried, hoarsely, almost 
inarticulately; ‘‘ you do not meanthat! You 
forget—I am not to die until morning.’ 

““T have said nothing of morning,”’ re- 
plied the general, coldly; ‘‘that was an as- 
sumption of yourown. You die now.” 

“But, general, I beg—I implore you to 
remember; I am to hang! It will take some 
time to erect the gallows—two hours—an 
hour. Spies are hanged; I have rights 
under military law. For heaven’s sake, gen- 
eral, consider how short—’”’ 

‘*Captain, observe my directions.’’ 

The officer drew his sword, and, fixing his 
eyes upon the prisoner, pointed silently to the 
opening of the tent. The prisoner, deathly 
pale, hesitated; the officer grasped him by 
the collar and pushed him gently forward. 
As he approached the tent pole, the frantic 
man sprang to it, and, with cat-like agility, 
seized the handle of the bowie knife, plucked 
the weapon from the scabbard, and, thrust- 
ing the captain aside, leaped upon the general 
with the fury of a madman, hurling him to 
the ground and falling headlong upon him 
as he lay. The table was overturned, the 


160 PARKER ADDERSON, PHILOSOPHER. 


candle extinguished, and they fought blindly 
inthe darkness. The provost-marshal sprang 
to the assistance of his superior officer, and 
was himself prostrated upon the struggling 
forms. Curses and inarticulate cries of rage 
and pain came from the welter of limbs and 
bodies; the tent came down upon them, and 
beneath its hampering and enveloping folds 
the struggle went on. Private Tassman, re- 
turning from his errand and dimly conjectur- 
ing the situation, threw down his rifle, and, 
laying hold of the flouncing canvas at random, 
vainly tried to drag it off the men under it; 
and the sentinel who paced up and down in 
front, not daring to leave his beat though the 
skies should fall, discharged his piece. The 
report alarmed the camp; drums beat the 
long roll and bugles sounded the assembly, 
bringing swarms of half-clad men into the 
moonlight, dressing as they ran, and falling 
into line at the sharp commands of their 
officers. This was well; being in line the 
men were under control; they stood at arms 
while the general’s staff and the men of his 
escort brought order out of confusion by lift- 
ing off the fallen tent and pulling apart the 
breathless and bleeding actors in that strange 
contention. 


PARKER ADDERSON, PHILOSOPHER. 161 


Breathless, indeed, was one; the captain 
was dead, the handle of the bowie knife pro- 
truding from his throat and pressed back be- 
neath his chin until the end had caught in 
the angle of the jaw, and the hand that de- 
livered the blow had been unable to remove 
the weapon. In the dead man’s hand was 
his sword, clenched with a grip that defied 
the strength of the living. Its blade was 
streaked with red to the hilt. 

Lifted to his feet, the general sank back to 
the earth with a moan and fainted. Besides 
his bruises he had two sword-thrusts—one 
through the thigh, the other through the 
shoulder. 

The spy had suffered the least damage. 
Apart from a broken right arm, his wounds 
were such only as might have been incurred 
in an ordinary combat with nature’s weapons. 
But he was dazed, and seemed hardly to 
know what had occurred. He shrank away 
from those attending him, cowered upon the 
ground, and uttered unintelligible remon- 
strances. His face, swollen by blows and 
stained with gouts of blood, nevertheless 
showed white beneath his disheveled hair— 
as white as that of a corpse. 

“‘The man is not insane,’’ said the surgeon 

II 


162 PARKER ADDERSON, PHILOSOPHER. 


in reply to a question; ‘‘he is suffering from 
‘fright. Who and what is he?” 

Private Tassman began to explain. It was 
the opportunity of his life; he omitted noth- 
ing that could in any way accentuate the im- 
portance of his own relation to the night’s 
events. When he had finished his story and 
was ready to begin it again, nobody gave him 
any attention. 

The general had now recovered conscious- 
ness. He raised himself upon his elbow, 

looked about him, and, seeing the spy crouch- 
ing by a camp-fire, guarded, said, simply :— 

‘‘Take that man to the parade ground and 
shoot him.”’ 

‘‘The general’s mind wanders,’’ said an 
officer standing near. 

‘* His mind does zof wander,”’ the adjutant- 
general said. ‘‘I have a memorandum from 
him about this business; he had given that 
same order to Hasterlick’’—with a motion 
of the hand toward the dead provost-mar- 
-shal—‘‘ and, by God! it shall be executed.”’ 

Ten minutes later Sergeant Parker Adder- 
son, of the Federal army, philosopher and 
wit, kneeling in the moonlight and begging 
incoherently for his life, was shot to death by 
twenty men. As the volley rang out upon 


PARKER ADDERSON, PHILOSOPHER. 163 


the keen air of the winter midnight, General 
Clavering, lying white and still in the red glow 
of the camp-fire, opened his big blue eyes, 
looked pleasantly upon those about him, and 
said, ‘‘ How silent it all is!’ 

The surgeon looked at the adjutant-gen- 
eral, gravely and significantly. The patient’s 
eyes slowly closed, and thus he lay for a few 
moments; then, his face suffused with a smile 
of ineffable sweetness, he said, faintly, ‘I 
suppose this must be death,’’ and so passed 
away. 


I SERENE AG 
ie ates Bat Ps 
or caer te, 


A WATCHER BY THE DEAD. 


I. 


[N an upper room of an unoccupied dwell- 

ing in that part of San Francisco known as 
North Beach lay the body of a man under a 
sheet. The hour was near nine in the even- 
ing; the room was dimly lighted by a single 
candle. Although the weather was warm, 
the two windows, contrary to the custom 
which gives the dead plenty of air, were 
closed and the blinds drawn down. The 
furniture of the room consisted of but three 
pieces,—an arm-chair, a small reading stand, 
supporting the candle, and a long kitchen ta- 
ble, supporting the body of the man. All 
these, as also the corpse, would seem to 
have been recently brought in, for an ob- 
server, had there been one, would have seen 
that all were free from dust, whereas every- 
thing else in the room was pretty thickly 
coated with it, and there were cobwebs in the 
angles of the walls. 

Under the sheet the outlines of the body 


(165) 


166 A WATCHER BY THE DEAD. 


could be traced, even the features, these hav- 
ing that unnaturally sharp definition which 
seems to belong to faces of the dead, but is 
really characteristic of those only that have 
been wasted by disease. From the silence of 
the room one would rightly have inferred 
that it was not in the front of the house, 
facing a street. It really faced nothing but a 
high breast of rock, the rear of the building 
being set into a hill. 

As a neighboring church clock was strik- 
ing nine with an indolence which seemed to 
imply such an indifference to the flight of 
time that one could hardly help wondering 
why it took the trouble to strike at all, the 
single door of the room was opened and a 
man entered, advancing toward the body. 
As he did so the door closed, apparently of 
its own volition; there was a grating, as of a 
key turned with difficulty, and the snap of the 
lock bolt as it shot into its socket. A sound 
of retiring footsteps in the passage outside 
ensued, and the man was, to all appearance, a 
prisoner. Advancing to the table, he stood 
a moment looking down at the body; then, 
with a slight shrug of the shoulders, walked 
over to one of the windows and hoisted the 
blind. The darkness outside was absolute, 


A WATCHER BY THE DEAD. 167 


the panes were covered with dust, but, by 
wiping this away, he could see that the win- 
dow was fortified with strong iron bars cross- 
ing it within a few inches of the glass, and 
imbedded in the masonry on each side.. He 
examined the other window. It was the 
same. He manifested no great curiosity in 
the matter, did not even so much as raise 
the sash. If he was a prisoner he was ap- 
parently a tractable one. Having completed 
his examination of the room, he seated him- 
self in the arm-chair, took a book from his 
pocket, drew the stand with its candle along- 
side and began to read. 

The man was young—not more than thirty 
—dark in complexion, smooth-shaven, with 
brown hair. His face was thin and high- 
nosed, with a broad forehead and a “ firm- 
ness’’ of the chin and jaw which is said by 
those having it to denote resolution. The 
eyes were gray and steadfast, not moving ex- 
cept with definitive purpose. They were now 
for the greater part of the time fixed upon 
his book, but he occasionally withdrew them 
and turned them to the body on the table, 
not, apparently, from any dismal fascination 
which, under such circumstances, it might be. 
supposed to exercise upon even a courageous 


168 A WATCHER BY THE DEAD. 


person, nor with a conscious rebellion against 
the opposite influence which might dominate 
a timid one. He looked at it as if in his 
reading he had come upon something recall- 
ing him to a sense of his surroundings. 
Clearly this watcher by the dead was dis- 
charging his trust with intelligence and com- 
posure, as became him. 

After reading for perhaps a half-hour he 
seemed to come to the end of a chapter and 
quietly laid away the book. He then rose, 
and, taking the reading stand from the floor, 
carried it into a corner of the room near one 
of the windows, lifted the candle from it, and 
returned to the empty fireplace before which 
he had been sitting. 

A moment later he walked over to the body 
on the table, lifted the sheet, and turned it 
back from the head, exposing a mass of dark 
hair and a thin face-cloth, beneath which the 
features showed with even sharper definition 
than before. Shading his eyes by interposing 
his free hand between them and the candle, 
he stood looking at his motionless compan- 
ion with a serious and tranquil regard. Sat- 
isfied with his inspection, he pulled: the sheet 
over the face again, and, returning to his chair, 
took some matches off the candlestick, put 


A WATCHER BY THE DEAD. 169 ~ 


them in the side pocket of his sack coat and 
satdown. He then lifted the candle from its 
socket and looked at it critically, as if calcu- 
lating how long it would last. It was barely 
two inches long; in another hour he would be 
in darkness! He replaced it in the candle- 
stick and blew it out. 


Il. 


In a physician’s office in Kearny street 
three men sat about a table, drinking punch 
and smoking. It was late in the evening, 
almost midnight, indeed, and there had been 
no lack of punch. The eldest of the three, 
Dr. Helberson, was the host—it was in his 
rooms they sat. He was about thirty years 
of age; the others were even younger; all 
were physicians. 

**The superstitious awe with which the liv- 
ing regard the dead,’’ said Dr. Helberson, 
“is hereditary and incurable. One need no 
more be ashamed of it than of the fact that 
he inherits, for example, an incapacity for 
mathematics, or a tendency to lie.’’ 

The others laughed. ‘‘Oughtn’t a man 
to be ashamed to be a liar?’’ asked the 
youngest of the three, who was, in fact, a 
medical student not yet graduated. 


170 A WATCHER BY THE DEAD. 


‘‘My dear Harper, I said nothing about 
that. The tendency to lie is one thing; lying 
is another.”’ 

‘But do you think,’’ said the third man, 
‘that this superstitious feeling, this fear of 
the dead, reasonless as we know it to be, is 
universal? I am myself not conscious of it.” 

‘‘Oh, but it is ‘in your system’ for all 
that,’’ replied Helberson; ‘‘it needs only 
the right conditions—what Shakespeare calls 
the ‘confederate season’—to manifest itself 
in some very disagreeable way that will open 
your eyes. Physicians and soldiers are, of 
course, more nearly free from it than others. ” 

‘*Physicians and soldiers!—why don’t you 
add hangmen and headsmen? Let us have 
in all the assassin classes.’’ 

‘‘No, my dear Mancher; the juries will 
not let the public executioners acquire suffh- 
cient familiarity with death to be altogether 
unmoved by it.’’ 

Young Harper, who had been helping him- 
self to a fresh cigar at the sideboard, resumed 
his seat. ‘‘What would you consider con- 
ditions under which any man of woman born 
would become insupportably conscious of his 
share of our common weakness in this re- 
gard?’’ he asked, rather verbosely. 


A WATCHER BY THE DEAD. ‘171 


** Well, I should say that if a man were 
locked up all night with a corpse—alone— 
in a dark room—of a vacant house—with no 
bed covers to pull over his head—and lived 
through it without going altogether mad— 
he might justly boast himself not of woman 
born, nor yet, uke Macduff, a product of 
Czesarean section.’ 

“‘T thought you never would finish pliap 
up conditions,”’ said Harper, ‘‘ but I knowa 
man who is neither a physician nor a soldier 
who will accept them all, for any stake you 
like to name.” 

‘* Who is he?”’ 

‘* His name is Jarette—a stranger in Cal- 
ifornia; comes from my town in New York. 
I haven’t any money to back him, but he will 
back himself with dead loads of it.’’ 

** How do you know that?”’ 

“He would rather bet than eat. As for 
fear—I dare say he thinks it some cutaneous 
disorder, or, possibly, a particular kind of re- 
ligious heresy.” 

‘*What does he look like?’’ Helberson 
was evidently becoming interested. 

“ Like Mancher, here—might be his twin 
brother.”’ 

‘*T accept the challenge,’’ said Helberson, 
promptly. 


172 A WATCHER BY THE DEAD. 


‘‘ Awfully obliged to you for the compli- 
ment, I’m sure,’’ drawled Mancher, who was 
growing sleepy. ‘‘Can’t I get into this ?”’ 

‘‘ Not against me,’’ Helberson said. ‘‘I 
don’t want your money.”’ 

‘* All right,’? said Mancher; ‘‘I’ll be the 
corpse.”’ 

The others laughed. 

The outcome of this crazy conversation we 


have seen. 
III. 


In extinguishing his meager allowance of 
candle Mr. Jarette’s object was to preserve 
it against some unforeseen need. He may — 
have thought, too, or half thought, that the 
darkness would be no worse at one time than 
another, and if the situation became insup- 
portable, it would be better to have a means 
of relief, or even release. At any rate, it was 
wise to havea little reserve of light, even if 
only to enable him to look at his watch. 

No sooner had he blown out the candle 
and set it on the floor at his side than he set- 
tled himself comfortably in the arm-chair, 
leaned back and closed his eyes, hoping and 
expecting to sleep. In this he was disap- 
pointed; he had never in his life felt less 
sleepy, and in a few minutes he gave up the 


A WATCHER BY THE DEAD. 173 


attempt. But what could he do? He could 
not go groping about in the absolute dark- 
ness at the risk of bruising himself—at the 
risk, too, of blundering against the table and 
rudely disturbing the dead. We all recog- 
nize their right to lie at rest, with immunity 
from all that is harsh and violent. Jarette 
almost succeeded. in making himself believe 
that considerations of that kind restrained 
him from risking the collision and fixed him 
to the chair. 

While thinking of this matter he fancied 
that he heard a faint sound in the direction 
of the table—what kind of sound he could 
hardly have explained. He did not turn his 
head. Why should he—in the darkness? 
But he listened—why should he not? And 
listening he grew giddy and grasped the arms 
of the chair for support. There was a strange 
ringing in his ears; his head seemed bursting; 
his chest was oppressed by the constriction of 
his clothing. He wondered why it was so, 
and whether these were symptoms of fear. 
Suddenly, with a long and strong expiration, 
his chest appeared to collapse, and with the 
great gasp with which he refilled his exhausted 
lungs the vertigo left him, and he knew that 
so intently had he listened that he had held 


174 A WATCHER BY THE DEAD. 


his ‘breath almost to suffocation. The reve- 
lation was vexatious; he arose, pushed away 
the chair with his foot, and strode to the cen- 
ter of the room. But one does not stride far 
in darkness; he began to grope, and, finding 
the wall, followed it to an angle, turned, fol- 
lowed it past the two windows, and there in 
another corner came into violent contact with 
the reading stand, overturning it. It madea 
clatter which startled him. He was annoyed. 
‘** How the devil could I have forgotton where 
it was!’’ he muttered, and groped his way 
along the third wall to the fireplace. ‘‘I 
must put things to rights,’”’ said Mr. Jarette, 
feeling the floor for the candle. 

Having recovered that, he lighted it and 
instantly turned his eyes to the table, where, 
naturally, nothing had undergone any change. 
The reading stand lay unobserved upon the 
floor; he had forgotten to ‘‘ put it to rights.”’ 
He looked all about the room, dispersing the 
deeper shadows by movements of the candle 
in his hand, and, finally, crossing over to the 
door, tried it by turning and pulling the knob 
with all his strength. It did not yield and 
this seemed to afford him a certain satisfaction; 
indeed, he secured it more firmly by a bolt 
which he had not before observed. Return- 


a 


— 
| pis 


* 


A WATCHER BY THE DEAD. 175 


ing to his chair, he looked at his watch; it 
was half-past nine. With a start of surprise 
he held the watch at his ear. It had not 
stopped. The candle was now visibly shorter. 
He again extinguished it, placing it on the 
floor at his side as before. 

Mr. Jarette was not at his ease; he was dis- 
tinctly dissatisfied with his surroundings, and 
with himself for being so. ‘‘ What have I to 
fear?” he thought. ‘‘This is ridiculous and 
disgraceful; I will not be so great a fool.’’ 
But courage does not come of saying, ‘‘I 
will be courageous,’’ nor of recognizing its 
appropriateness to the occasion, The more 
Jarette condemned himself, the more reason 
he gave himself for condemnation; the greater 
the number of variations which he played 
upon the simple theme of the harmlessness of 
the dead, the more horrible grew the discord 
of his emotions. ‘‘What!’’ he cried aloud in 
the anguish of his spirit, ‘‘ what! shall I, 
who have not a shade of superstition in my 
nature—I, who have no belief in immortality 
—I, who know (and never more clearly than 
now) that the after-life is the dream of a de- 
sire—shall I lose at once my bet, my honor, 
and my self-respect, perhaps my reason, be- 
cause certain savage ancestors, dwelling in 


176 A WATCHER BY THE DEAD. 


caves and burrows, conceived the monstrous 
notion that the dead walk by night; that—”’ 
distinctly, unmistakably, Mr. Jarette heard 
behind him a light, soft sound of footfalls, de- 
liberate, regular, and successively nearer! 


IV. 


Just before daybreak the next morning 
Dr. Helberson and his young friend Harper 
were driving slowly through the streets of 
North Beach in the doctor’s coupé. 

‘* Have you still the confidence of youth in 
the courage or stolidity of your friend ?”’ 
said the elder man. ‘‘ Do you believe that I 
have lost this wager ?”’ 

‘*Il know you have,’’ replied the other, 
with enfeebling emphasis. 

‘*Well, upon my soul, I hope so.”’ 

It was spoken earnestly, almost solemnly. 
There was a silence for a few moments. 

‘‘Harper,’’ the doctor resumed, looking 
very serious in the shifting half-lights that 
entered the carriage as they passed the street 
lamps, ‘‘I don’t feel altogether comfortable 
about this business. If your friend had not 
irritated me by the contemptuous manner in 
which he treated my doubt of his endurance 
—a purely physical quality—and by the cool 


A WATCHER BY THE DEAD. 177 


incivility of his suggestion that the corpse be 
that of a physician, I should not have gone 
on with it. If anything should happen, we 
are ruined, as I fear we deserve to be.”’ 

‘What can happen? Even if the matter 
should be taking a serious turn, of which I 
am not at all afraid, Mancher has only to 
resurrect himself and explain matters. With 
a genuine ‘subject’ from the dissecting room 
or one of your late patients, it might be dif- 
ferent.”’ 

Dr. Mancher, then, had been as good as 
his promise; he was the ‘‘ corpse.”’ 

Dr. Helberson was silent for a long time, 
as the carriage, at a snail’s pace, crept along 
the same street it had traveled two or three 
times already. Presently he spoke: ‘‘ Well, 
let us hope that Mancher, if he has had to 
rise from the dead, has been discreet about it. 
A mistake in that might make matters worse 
instead of better.”’ 

‘“Yes,’’ said Harper, ‘‘Jarette would kill 
him. But, doctor’’—looking at his watch 
as the carriage passed a gas lamp—‘‘it is 
nearly four o’clock at last.’’ . 

A moment later the two had quitted the 
vehicle, and were walking briskly toward the 
long unoccupied house belonging to the doc- 

12 


178 A WATCHER BY THE DEAD. 


tor, in which they had immured Mr. Jarette, 
in accordance with the terms of the mad 
wager. As they neared it, they met a man 
running. ‘‘Can you tell me,’’ he cried, sud- 
denly checking his speed, ‘‘ where I can find 
a physician ?’”’ 

‘“What’s the matter?’’ Helberson oaked 
non-committal. 

‘‘Go and see for yourself,”’ said the man, 
resuming his running. 

They hastened on. Arrived at the house, 
they saw several persons entering in haste 
and excitement. In some of the dwellings 
near by and across the way, the chamber 
windows were thrown up, showing a protru- 
sion of heads. All heads were asking ques- 
tions, none heeding the questions of the 
others. A few of the windows with closed 
blinds were illuminated; the inmates of those 
rooms were dressing to come down, Ex- 
actly opposite the door of the house which they 
sought, a street lamp threw a yellow, insuffi- 
cient light upon the scene, seeming to say 
that it could disclose a good deal more if it 
wished. Harper, who was now deathly pale, 
paused at the door and laid a hand upon his 
companion’s arm. ‘‘It is all up with us, 
doctor,’’ he said in extreme agitation, which 


A WATCHER BY THE DEAD. 179 


contrasted strangely with his free and easy 
words; ‘‘the game has gone against us all. 
Let’s not go in there; I’m for lying low.’’ 

‘‘T’m a physician,’”’ said Dr. Helberson, 
calmly; ‘‘there may be need of one.’’ 

They mounted the doorsteps and were 
about to enter. The door was open; the 
street lamp opposite lighted the passage into 
which it opened. It was full of people. 
Some had ascended the stairs at the farther 
end, and, denied admittance above, waited 
for better fortune. All were talking, none 
listening. Suddenly, on the upper landing 
there was a great commotion; a man had 
sprung out of a door and was breaking away 
from those endeavoring to detain him.. Down 
through the mass of affrighted idlers he came, 
pushing them aside, flattening them against 
the wall on one side, or compelling them to 
cling by the rail on the other, clutching them 
by the throat, striking them savagely, thrust- 
ing them back down the stairs, and walking 
over the fallen. His clothing was in disorder, 
he was without a hat. His eyes, wild and 
restless, had in them something more terrify- 
ing than his apparently superhuman strength. 
His face, smooth-shaven, was bloodless, his 
hair snow white. 


180 A WATCHER BY THE DEAD. 


As the crowd at the foot of the stairs, hav- 
ing more freedom, fell away to let him pass, 
Harper sprang forward. ‘‘Jarette! Jarette!” 
he cried. 

Dr. Helberson seized Harper by the collar 
and dragged him back. The man looked 
into their faces without seeming to see them, 
and sprang through the door, down the steps, 
into the street and away. A stout police- 
man, who had had inferior success in con- 
quering his way down the stairway, followed: 
a moment later and started in pursuit, all the 
heads in the windows—those of women and 
children now—screaming in guidance. 

The stairway being now partly cleared, 
most of the crowd having rushed down to 
the street to observe the flight and pursuit, 
Dr. Helberson mounted to the landing, fol- 
lowed by Harper. At a door in the upper 
passage an officer denied them admittance. 
‘‘We are physicians,” said the doctor, and 
they passed in. The room was full of men, 
dimly seen, crowded about a table. The new- 
comers edged their way forward, and looked 
over the shoulders of those in the front rank. . 
Upon the table, the lower limbs covered with 
a sheet, lay the body of a man, brilliantly il- 
luminated by the beam of a bull’s-eye lantern: 


A WATCHER BY THE DEAD. 181 


held by a policeman standing at the feet. 
The others, excepting those near the head— 
the officer himself—all were indarkness. The 
face of the body showed yellow, repulsive, 
horrible! The eyes were partly open and up- 
turned, and the jaw fallen; traces of froth de- 
filed the lips, the chin, the cheeks. A tall 
man, evidently a physician, bent over the 
body with his hand thrust under the shirt 
front. He withdrew it and placed two fin- 
gers in the open mouth. ‘‘ This man has 
been about two hours dead,” said he. ‘‘It is 
a case for the coroner.” 

He drew a card from his pocket, handed it 
to the officer, and made his way toward the 
door. | 

‘**Clear the room—out, all!’’ said the offi- 
cer, sharply, and the body disappeared as if 
it had been snatched away, as he shifted the 
lantern and flashed its beam of light here and 
there against the faces of the crowd. The ef- 
fect was amazing! The men, blinded, con- 
fused, almost terrified, made a tumultuous 
rush for the door, pushing, crowding, and 
tumbling over one another as they fled, like 
the hosts of Night before the shafts of Apollo. 
Upon the struggling, trampling mass the of- 
ficer poured his light without pity and with- 


182 A WATCHER BY THE DEAD. 


out cessation. Caught in the current, Hel- 
berson and Harper were swept out of the 
room and cascaded down the stairs into the 
street. 

‘‘Good God, doctor! did I not tell you 
that Jarette would kill him?’’ said Harper, as 
soon as they were clear of the crowd. 

‘*T believe you did,’ replied the other 
without apparent emotion. 

‘They walked on in silence, block after 
block. Against the graying east the dwell- 
ings of our hill tribes showed in silhouette. 
The familiar milk wagon was already astir in 
the streets; the baker’s man would soon come 
upon the scene; the newspaper carrier was 
abroad in the land. 

‘It strikes me, youngster,’’ said Helber- 
son, ‘‘that you and I have been having too 
much of the morning air lately. It is un- 
wholesome; we need a change. What do 
you say to a tour in Europe?”’ 

“When?” 

“['m not particular. I should suppose 
that 4 o’clock this afternoon would be early 
enough.” 

‘Tl meet you at the boat,’’ said Harper. 


V. 


Seven years afterward these two men sat 


A WATCHER BY THE DEAD. 183 


upon a bench in Madison Square, New York, 
in familiar conversation. Another man, who 
had been observing them for some time, him- 
self unobserved, approached and, courteously 
lifting his hat from locks as white as snow, 
said: ‘‘I beg your pardon, gentlemen, but 
when you have killed a man by coming to 
life, it is best to change clothes with him, and 
at the first opportunity make a break for lib- 
erty.” 

Helberson and Harper exchanged signifi- 
cant glances. They were apparently amused. 
The former then looked the stranger kindly 
in the eye, and replied:— 

‘*That has always been my plan. I entirely 
agree with you as to its advant——”’ 

He stopped suddenly and grew deathly 
pale. He stared at the man, open-mouthed; 
he trembled visibly. 

“Ah!” said the stranger, ‘‘I see that you 
are indisposed, doctor. If you cannot treat 
yourself, Dr. Harper can do something for 
you, I am sure.” 

‘‘Who the devil are you?”’ said Harper 
bluntly. 

The stranger came nearer, and, bending 
towa:d them, said in a whisper: ‘‘I call my- 
self Jarette sometimes, but I don’t mind tell- 


184 A WATCHER BY THE DEAD. 


ing you, for old friendship, that I am Dr. 
William Mancher.”’ 

The revelation brought both men to their 
feet. ‘Mancher!’’ they cried in a breath; 
and Helberson added: ‘‘It is true, by God!” 

‘“‘Yes,” said the stranger, smiling vaguely, . 
‘it is true enough, no doubt.” 

He hesitated, and seemed to be trying to re- 
call something, then began humming a pop- 
ular air. He had apparently forgotten their 
presence, 

‘*Look here, Mancher,” said the elder of 
the two, ‘‘tell us just what occurred that 
night—to Jarette, you know.” 

‘‘Oh, yes, about Jarette,” said the other. 
‘*It’s odd I should have neglected to tell you 
—I tell it so often. You see I knew, by 
overhearing him talking to himself, that he 
was pretty badly frightened. So I couldn’t 
resist the temptation to come to life and have 
a bit of fun out of him—I couldn’t, really. 
That was all right, though certainly I did not 
think he would take it so seriously; I did not, 
truly. And afterward—well, it was a tough 
job changing places with him, and then— 
damn you! you didn’t let me out!”. 

Nothing could exceed the ferocity with 
which these last words were delivered. Both 
men stepped back in alarm. 


A WATCHER BY THE DEAD. 185 


*‘We?—why—why,” Helberson stam- 
mered, losing his self-possession utterly, “we 
had nothing to do with it.” 

‘‘Didn’t I say you were Doctors Hellborn 
and Sharper?” inquired the lunatic, laughing. 

‘My name is Helberson, yes; and this 
gentleman is Mr. Harper,” replied the former, 
reassured. ‘‘ But weare not physicians now; 
we are—well, hang it, old man, we are gam- 
blers.” 

And that was the truth. 

“A very good profession—very good, in- 
deed; and, by the way, I hope Sharper here 
paid over Jarette’s money like an honest 
stakeholder. A very good and honorable 
profession,” he repeated, thoughtfully, mov- 
ing carelessly away; ‘‘but I stick to the old 
one. I am High Supreme Medical Officer of 
the Bloomingdale Asylum; it is my duty to 
cure the superintendent.”’ 


—_ a % x , a 
bo" st ae 


THE MAN AND THE SNAKE. 


It is of veritabyll report, and attested of so 
many that there be nowe of wyse and learned none 
to gaynsaye it, that ye serpente hys eye hath a 
magnetick propertie that whosoe falleth into its 
svasion is drawn forwards in despyte of his wille, 
and perisheth miserabyll by ye creature hys byte. 

TRETCHED at ease upon a sofa, in gown 

and slippers, Harker Brayton smiled as 
he read the foregoing sentence in old Morrys- 
ter’s ‘‘Marvells of Science.’’ ‘‘The only mar- 
vel in the matter,” he said to himself, ‘is’ 
that the wise and learned in Morryster’s day 
should have believed such nonsense as is re- 
jected by most of even the ignorant in ours.”’ 

A train of reflections followed—for Bray- 
ton was a man of thought—and he uncon- 
sciously lowered his book without altering 
the direction of his eyes. As soon as the 
volume had gone below the line of sight, 
something in an obscure corner of the room 
recalled his attention to his surroundings. 
What he saw, in the shadow under his bed, 
were two small points of light, apparently 
about an inch apart. They ~— ay been 

187 


188 THE MAN AND THE SNARE. 


reflections of the gas jet above him, in metal 
nail heads; he gavethem but little thought 
and resumed his reading. A moment later 
something—some impulse which it did not 
occur to him to analyze—impelled him to 
lower the book again and seek for what he 
saw before. The points of light were still 
there. They seemed to have become brighter 
than before, shining with a greenish luster 
which he had not at first observed. He 
thought, too, that they might have moved a 
trifle—were somewhat nearer. They were 
still too much in shadow, however, to reveal 
their nature and origin to an indolent atten- 
tion, and he resumed his reading. Suddenly 
something in the text suggested a thought 
which made him start and drop the book for 
the third time to the side of the sofa, whence, 
escaping from his hand, it fell sprawling to the 
floor, back upward. Brayton, halt-risen, 
was staring intently into the obscurity beneath 
the bed, where the points of light shone 
with, it seemed to him, an added fire. His 
attention was now fully aroused, his gaze 
eager and imperative. It disclosed, almost 
directly beneath the foot-rail of the bed, the 
coils of a large serpent—the points of light 
were its eyes! Its horrible head, thrust flatly 


THE MAN AND THE SNAKE, 189 


forth from the innermost coil and resting upon 
the outermost, was directed straight toward 
him, the definition of the wide, brutal jaw and 
the idiot-like forehead serving to show the 
direction of its malevolent gaze. The eyes 
were no longer merely luminous points; they 
looked into his own with a meaning, a malign 


significance. 
II. 


A snake in a bedroom of a modern city 
dwelling of the better sort is, happily, not so 
common a phenomenon as to make explana- 
tion altogether needless. Harker Brayton, a 
bachelor of thirty-five, a scholar, idler, and 
something of an athlete, rich, popular, and of 
sound health, had returned to San Francisco 
from all manner of remote and unfamiliar 
countries. His tastes, always a trifle luxu- 
rious, had taken on an added exuberance from 
long privation; and the resources of even the 
Castle Hotel being inadequate to their per- 
fect gratification, he had gladly accepted the 
hospitality of his friend, Dr. Druring, the 
distinguished scientist. Dr. Druring’s house, 
a large, old-fashioned one in what was now an 
obscure quarter of the city, had an outer and 
visible aspect of proud reserve. It plainly 
would not associate with the contiguous ele- 


190 THE MAN AND THE SNAKE. 


ments of its altered environment, and ap- 
peared to have developed some of the eccen- 
tricities which come of isolation. One of 
these was a ‘‘wing,’’ conspicuously irrele- 
vant in point of architecture, and no less re- 
bellious in the matter of purpose; for it was a 
combination of laboratory, menagerie and 
museum. It was here that the doctor in- 
dulged the scientific side of his nature in the 
study of such forms of animal life as engaged 
his interest and comforted his taste—which, 
it must be confessed, ran rather to the lower 
forms. For one of the higher types nimbly 
and sweetly to recommend itself unto his gen- 
tle senses, it had at least to retain certain ru- 
dimentary characteristics allying it to such 
‘dragons of the prime’’ as toads and snakes, 
His scientific sympathies were distinctly rep- 
tilian; he loved nature’s vulgarians and de- 
scribed himself as the Zola of zodlogy. His 
wife and daughters not having the, advantage 
to share his enlightened curiosity regarding 
the works and ways of our ill-starred fellow- 
creatures, were, with needless austerity, ex- 
cluded from what he called the Snakery, and 
doomed to companionship with their own 
kind, though, to soften the rigors of their lot, 
he had permitted them, out of his great wealth, 


THE MAN AND THE SNAKE. Ig! 


to outdo the reptiles in the gorgeousness of 
their surroundings and to shine with a supe- 
rior splendor. 

Architecturally, and in point of ‘“furnish- 
ing,’’ the Snakery had a severe simplicity be- 
fitting the humble circumstances of its occu- 
pants, many of whom, indeed, could not 
safely have been intrusted with the liberty 
which is necessary to the full enjoyment of 
luxury, for they had the troublesome pecul- 
iarity of being alive. In their own apartments, 
however, they were under as little personal 
restraint as was compatible with their protec- 
tion from the baneful habit of swallowing one 
another; and, as Brayton had thoughtfully 
been apprised, it was more than a tradition 
that some of them had at divers times been 
found in parts of the premises where it would 
have embarrassed them to explain their pres- 
ence. Despite the Snakery and its uncanny 
associations—to which, indeed, he gave little 
attention—Brayton found life at the Druring 
mansion very much to his mind. 


III. 


Beyond a smart shock of surprise and a 
shudder of mere loathing, Mr. Brayton was 
not greatly affected. His first thought was 


192 THE MAN AND THE SNAKE. 


to ring the call bell and bring a servant; but, 
although the bell cord dangled within easy 
reach, he made no movement toward it; it 
had occurred to his mind that the act might 
subject him to the suspicion of fear, which he 
certainly did not feel. He was more keenly 
conscious of the incongruous nature of the 
situation than affected by its perils; it was re- 
volting, but absurd. 

The reptile was of a species with which 
Brayton was unfamiliar. Its length he could 
only conjecture; the body at the largest visible 
part seemed about as thick as his forearm. 
In what way was it dangerous, if in any way? 
Was it venomous? Was it a constrictor? 
His knowledge of nature’s danger signals did 
not enable him to say; he had never deci- 
phered the code. 

If not dangerous, the creature was at least 
offensive. It was de ¢rop—‘‘ matter out of 
place’’—an impertinence. The gem was un- 
worthy of the setting. Even the barbarous 
taste of our time and country, which had 
loaded the walls of the room with pictures, 
the floor with urniture and the furniture with 
bric-a-brac, had not quite fitted the place for 
this bit of the savage life of the jungle. Be- 
sides—-insupportable thought!--the exhalations 


THE MAN AND THE SNAKE, 193 


of its breath mingled with the atmosphere 
which he himself was breathing! 

These thoughts shaped themselves with 
greater or less definition in Brayton’s mind, 
and begot action. The process is what we 
call consideration and decision. It is thus 
that we are wise and unwise, It is thus that 
the withered leaf in an autumn breeze shows 
greater or less intelligence than its fellows, 
falling upon the land or upon the lake. The 
secret of human action is an open one: some- 
thing contracts our muscles. Does it mat- 
ter if we give to the preparatory molecular 
changes the name of will? 

Brayton rose to his feet and prepared to back 
softly away from the snake, without disturb- 
ing it, if possible, and through the door. 
People retire so from the presence of the 
great, for greatness is power, and power is a 
menace. He knew that he could walk back- 
ward without obstruction; and find the door 
without error. Should the monster follow, 
the taste which had plastered the walls with 
paintings had consistently supplied a rack of 
murderous Oriental weapons from which he 
could snatch one to suit the occasion. In 
the meantime the snake’s eyes burned with 
a more pitiless malevolence than ever. 


13 


194 THE MAN AND THE SNARE. 


Brayton lifted his right foot free of the floor 
to step backward. That moment he felt a 
strong aversion to doing so. 

‘‘T am accounted brave,’’ he murmured; 
‘‘is bravery, then, no more than pride? Be- 
cause there are none to witness the shame 
shall I retreat ?”’ 

He was steadying himself with his right 
hand upon the back of a chair, his foot sus- 
pended. 

‘* Nonsense!”’ he said aloud; ‘‘I am not 
so great a coward as to fear to seem to myself 
afraid.”’ 

He lifted the foot a little higher by slightly 
bending the knee, and thrust it sharply to 
the floor—an inch in front of the other! 
He could not think how that occurred. A 
trial with the left foot had the same result; it 
was again in advance of the right. The hand 
upon the chair back was grasping it; the arm 
was straight, reaching somewhat backward. 
One might have seen that he was reluctant to 
lose his hold. The snake’s malignant head 
was still thrust forth from the inner coil as be- 
fore, the neck level. It had not moved, but 
its eyes were now electric sparks, radiating 
an infinity of luminous needles. 

The man had an ashy pallor. Again |e 


THE MAN AND THE SNAKE. 195 


took a step forward, and another, partly drag- 
ging the chair, which, when finally released, 
fell upon the floor with a crash. The man 
groaned; the snake made neither sound nor 
motion, but its eyes were two dazzling suns. 
The reptile itself was wholly concealed by 
them. They gave off enlarging rings of rich 
and vivid colors, which at their greatest ex- 
pansion successively vanished like soap bub- 
bles; they seemed to approach his very face, 
and anon were an immeasurable distance 
away. He heard, somewhere, the contin- 
uous throbbing of a great drum, with desul- 
tory bursts of far music, inconceivably sweet, 
like the tones of an zolian harp. He knew 
it for the sunrise melody of Memnon’s statue, 
and thought he stood in the Nileside reeds, 
hearing, with exalted sense, that immortal an- 
them through the silence of the centuries. 
The music ceased; rather, it became by in- 
sensible degrees the distant roll of a retreat- 
ing thunder-storm. A landscape, glittering 
with sun and rain, stretched before him, 
arched’ with a vivid rainbow, framing in its 
giant curve a hundred visible cities. In the 
middle distance a vast serpent, wearirg a 
crown, reared its head out of its voluminous 
convolutions and looked at him with his dead 


196 THE MAN AND THE SNAKE, 


mother’s eyes. Suddenly this enchanting 
landscape seemed to rise swiftly upward, like 
the drop scene at a theater, and vanished in 
a blank. Something struck him a hard blow 
upon the face and breast. He had fallen to 
the floor; the blood ran from his broken nose 
and his bruised lips. For a moment he was 
dazed and stunned, and lay with closed eyes, 
his face against the floor.. In a few moments 
he had recovered, and then realized that his 
fall, by withdrawing his eyes, had broken the 
spell which held him. He felt that now, by 
keeping his gaze averted, he would be able 
to retreat. But the thought of the serpent 
within a few feet of his head, yet unseen— 
perhaps in the very act of springing upon 
him and throwing its coils about his throat— 
was too horrible. He lifted his head, stared 
again into those baleful eyes, and was again 
in bondage. ; 

The snake had not moved, and appeared 
somewhat to have lost its power upon the im- 
agination; the gorgeous illusions of a few 
moments before were not repeated. Beneath 
that flat and brainless brow its black, beady 
eyes simply glittered, as at first, with an ex- 
pression unspeakably malignant. It was as 
if the creature, knowing its triumph assured, 


. THE MAN AND THE SNAKE. 197 


had determined to practice no more alluring 
wiles. 

Now ensued a fearful scene. The man, 
prone upon the floor, within a yard of his en- 
emy, raised the upper part of his body upon 
his elbows, his head thrown back, his legs ex- 
tended to their full length. His face was 
white between its gouts of blood; his eyes 
were strained open to their uttermost expan- 
sion. There was froth upon his lips; it 
dropped off in flakes. Strong convulsions 
ran through his body, making almost serpen- 
tine undulations. He bent himself at the 
waist, shifting his legs from sidetoside. And 
every movement left him a little nearer to the 
snake. He thrust his hands forward to brace 
himself back, yet constantly advanced upon 


his elbows. 
IV. 


Dr. Druring and his wife sat in the library. 
The scientist was in rare good humor. 

‘‘T have just obtained, by exchange with 
another collector,’ he said, ‘‘a splendid 
specimen of the ophiophagus.”’ 

‘And what may that be?’’ the lady in- 
quired with a somewhat languid interest. 

‘‘Why, bless my soul, what profound ig- 
norance! My dear, a man who ascertains 


198 THE MAN AND THE SNAKE. 


after marriage that his wife does not know 
Greek, is entitled to adivorce, The ophioph- 
_~ agus is a snake which eats other snakes.”’ 
~ ‘*T hope it will eat all yours,’’ she said, ab- 
sently shifting the lamp. ‘ But how does it 
get the other snakes? By charming them, I 
suppose.”’ 

‘‘That is just like you, dear,’’ said the 
doctor, with an affectationof petulance. ‘‘You 
know how irritating to me is any allusion to 
that vulgar superstition about the snake’s 
power of fascination.’’ 

The conversation was interrupted by a 
mighty cry, which rang through the silent 
house like the voice of a demon shouting in a 
tomb! Again and yet again it sounded, with 
terrible distinctness. They sprang to their 
feet, the man confused, the lady pale and 
speechless with fright. Almost before the 
echoes of the last cry had died away, the doc- 
tor was out of the room, springing up the 
staircase two steps at atime. In the corri- 
dor, in front of Brayton’s chamber, he met 
some servants who had come from the upper 
floor. Together they rushed at the door 
without knocking. It was unfastened and 
gave way. Brayton lay upon his stomach on 
the floor, dead. His head and arms were 


THE MAN AND THE SNAKE, 199 


partly concealed under the foot rail of the 
bed. They pulled the body away, turning it 
upon the back. The face was daubed with 
blood and froth, the eyes were wide open, 
staring—a dreadful sight! 

‘« Died in a fit, said the scientist,’’ bending 
his knee and placing his hand upon the heart. 
While in that position, he happened to glance 
under the bed. ‘‘ Good God!’’. he added, 
‘how did this thing get in here?’’ 

He reached under the bed, pulled out the 
snake, and flung it, still coiled, to the center 
of the room, whence, with a harsh, shuffling 
sound, it slid across the polished floor till 
stopped by the wall, where it lay without mo- 
tion. It was a stuffed snake; its eyes were 
two shoe buttons. 


A HOLY TERROR. 


HERE was an entire lack of interest in the 
latest arrival at Hurdy-Gurdy. He was 
not even christened with the picturesquely de- 
scriptive nickname which is so frequently a 
mining camp’s word of welcome to the new- 
comer. In almost any other camp there- 
about this circumstance would of itself have 
secured him some such appellation as ‘‘ The 
White-headed Conundrum,”’ or ‘‘ NoSarvey’”’ 
—an expression naively supposed to suggest 
to quick intelligences the Spanish guzen sade. 
He came without provoking a ripple of con- 
cern upon the social surface of Hurdy-Gurdy 
—-a place which, to the general Californian con- 
tempt of men’s personal antecedents super- 
added a local indifference of its own. The 
time was long past when it was of any impor- 
tance who came there, or if anybody came. 
No one was living at Hurdy-Gurdy. 

Two years before, the camp had boasted a 
stirring population of two or three thousand 
males, and not fewer than a dozen females. 
A majority of the former had done a few 


(200) 


A HOLY TERROR. 201 


weeks’ earnest work in demonstrating, to the 
disgust of the latter, the singularly mendacious 
character of the person whose ingenious tales 
of rich gold deposits had lured them thither 
—work, by the way, in which there was as 
little mental satisfaction as pecuniary profit; 
for a bullet from the pistol of a public-spirited 
citizen had put that imaginative gentleman 
beyond the reach of aspersion on the third 
day of the camp’s existence. Still, his fiction 
had a certain foundation in fact, and many 
had lingered a considerable time in and about 
Hurdy-Gurdy, though now all had been long 
gone. ) 

But they had left ample evidence of their 
sojourn. From the point where Injun Creek 
falls into the Rio San Juan Smith, upalong both 
banks of the former into the cafion whence it 
emerges, extended a double row of forlorn 
shanties that seemed about to fall upon one 
another’s neck to bewail their desolation; 
while about an equal number appeared to 
have straggled up the slope on either hand, 
and perched themselves upon commanding 
eminences, whence they craned forward to get 
a good view of the affecting scene. Most of 
these habitations were emaciated, as by fam- 
ine, to the condition of mere skeletons, about 


202 A HOLY TERROR. 


which clung unlovely tatters of what might 
have been skin, but was really canvas. The 
little valley itself, torn and gashed by pick and 
shovel, was unhandsome, with long, bending 
lines of decaying flume resting here and there 
upon the summits of sharp ridges, and stilt- 
ing awkwardly across the interspaces upon 
unhewn poles. The whole place presented 
that raw and forbidding aspect of arrested de- 
velopment which is a new country’s substitute 
for the solemn grace of ruin wrought by time. 
Whenever there remained a patch of the orig- 
inal soil, a rank overgrowth of weedsand bram- 
bles had spread upon the scene, and from its 
dank, unwholesome shades the visitor curi- 
ous in such matters might have obtained 
numberless souvenirs of the camp’s former 
glory—fellowless boots mantled with green 
mold and plethoric of rotting leaves; an oc- 
casional old felt hat; desultory remnants of a 
flannel shirt; sardine boxes inhumanly muti- 
lated, and a surprising profusion of black bot- 
tles, distributed with a truly catholic impar- 
tiality, everywhere. 
Il. 

The man who had now rediscovered Hurdy- 
Gurdy was evidently not curious as to its 
archeology. Nor, as he looked about him 


A HOLY TERROR. 203 


upon the dismal evidences of wasted work 
and broken hopes, their dispiriting signifi- 
cance accentuated by the ironical pomp of a 
cheap gilding by the rising sun, did he sup- 
plement his sigh of weariness by one of sensi- 
bility. He simply removed from the back of 
his tired burro a miner’s outfit a trifle larger 
than the animal itself, picketed that creature, 
and, selecting a hatchet from his kit, moved 
off at once across the dry bed of Injun Creek 
to the top of a low, gravelly hill beyond. 
Stepping across a prostrate fence of brush 
and boards, he picked up one of the latter, 
split it into five parts, and sharpened them at 
oneend. He then began a kind of search, 
occasionally stooping to examine something 
with close attention. At last his patient scru- 
tiny appeared to be rewarded with success, 
for he suddenly erected his figure to its full 
height, made a gesture of satisfaction, pro- 
nounced the word ‘‘Scarry,’’ and at once 
strode away, with long, equal steps, which he 
counted, then stopped and drove one of his 
stakes into the earth. He then looked care- 
fully about him, measured off a number of 
paces over a singularly uneven ground, and 
hammered in another. Pacing off twice the 
distance at a right angle to his former course, 


204. “A HOLY TERROR. 


he drove down a third, and, repeating the 
process, sank home the fourth, and then a 
fifth. This he split at the top, and in the 
cleft inserted an old letter envelope, covered 
with an intricate system of pencil tracks. In 
short, he staked off a hill claim in strict ac- 
cordance with the local mining laws of Hurdy- 
Gurdy, and put up the customary notice. 

It is necessary to explain that one of the 
adjuncts to Hurdy-Gurdy—one to which that 
metroplis became afterward itself an adjunct 
—was acemetery. In the first week of the 
camp’s existence this had been thoughtfully 
laid out by acommittee of citizens. The day 
after had been signalized by a debate between 
two members of the committee, with reference 
to a more eligible site, and on the third day 
the necropolis was inaugurated by a double 
funeral. As the camp had waned the ceme- 
tery had waxed; and long before the ultimate 
inhabitant, victorious alike over the insid- 
ious malaria and the forthright revolver, had 
turned the tail of his pack-ass upon Injun 
Creek, the outlying settlement had become a 
populous if not popular suburb, And now, 
when the town was fallen into the sere and 
yellow leaf of an unlovely senility, the grave- 
yard—though somewhat marred by time and 


A HOLY TERROR. | 208 


circumstance, and not altogether exempt from 
innovations in grammar and experiments in 
orthography, to say nothing of the devastating 
coyote—answered the humble needs of its 
denizens with reasonable completeness. It 
comprised a generous two acres of ground, 
which, with commendable thrift but needless 
care, had beenselected for its mineral unworth, 
contained two or three skeleton trees (one of 
which had a stout lateral branch from which a 
weather-wasted rope still significantly dan- 
gled), half a hundred gravelly mounds, a 
score of rude headboards displaying the lit- 
erary peculiarities above mentioned, and a 
struggling colony of prickly pears. Alto- 
gether, God’s Location, as with characteristic 
reverence it had been called, could justly 
boast of an indubitably superior quality of 
desolation. It was in the most thickly settled 

portion of this interesting demesne that Mr. — 
Jefferson Doman staked off his claim. If in 
the prosecution of his design he should deem 
it expedient to remove any of the dead, they 
would have the right to be suitably re-interred. 


III. 


This Mr. Jefferson Doman was from Eliz- 
abethtown, New Jersey, where, six years be- 


206 A HOLY TERROR. 


fore, he had left his heart in the keeping 
of a golden-haired, demure-mannered young 
woman named Mary Matthews, as collateral 
security for his return to claim her hand. 

“‘T just know you'll never get back alive— 
you never do succeed in anything,’’ was the 
remark which illustrated Miss Matthews’ 
notion of what constituted success, and, in- 
cidentally, her view of the nature of encour- 
agement. She added: ‘‘If you don’t I’ll go 
to California too. I can put the coins in little 
bags as you dig them out.”’ 

This characteristically feminine theory of 
auriferous deposits did not commend itself to 
the masculine intelligence: it was Mr. Do- 
man’s belief that gold was found in a liquid 
condition. He deprecated her intent with 
considerable enthusiasm, suppressed her sobs 
with a light hand upon her mouth, laughed 
in her eyes as he kissed away her tears, and, 
with a cheerful ‘‘Ta-ta,’’ went to California to 
labor for her through the long, loveless years, 
with a strong heart, an alert hope, and a 
steadfast fidelity that never for a moment for- 
got what it was about. Inthe meantime Miss 
Matthews had granted a monopoly of her 
humble talent for sacking up coins to Mr. Jo 
Seeman, of New York, gambler, by whom it 


A HOLY TERROR. 207 


was better appreciated than her commanding 
genius for unsacking and bestowing them 
upon his local rivals. Of this latter aptitude, 
indeed, he manifested his disapproval by an 
act which secured him the position of clerk of 
the prison laundry at Sing Sing, and for her 
the sobriguet of ‘‘Split-faced Mboll.’’ At 
about this time she wrote to Mr. Doman a 
touching letter of renunciation, inclosing her 
photograph to prove that she had no longer 
a right to indulge the dream of becoming 
Mrs. Doman, and recounting so graphically 
her fall from a horse that the staid bronco 
upon which Mr. Doman had ridden into Red 
Dog to get the letter, made vicarious atone- 
ment under the spur all the way back to 
camp. The letter failed ina signal way to 
accomplish its object; the fidelity which had 
before been to Mr. Doman a matter of love 
and duty, was thenceforth a matter of honor 
also; and the photograph, showing the once 
pretty face sadly disfigured as by the slash ol 
a knife, was duly instated in his affections, 
and its more comely predecessor treated with 
contumelious neglect. On being apprised of 
this, Miss Matthews, it is only fair to say, ap- 
peared less surprised than from theapparently 
low estimate of Mr. Doman’s generosity 


208 A HOLY TERROR. 


which the tone of her former letter attested. 
one would naturally have expected her to be. 
Soon after, however, her letters grew infre- 
quent, and then ceased altogether. 

But Mr. Doman had another correspond- 
ent, Mr. Barney Bree, of Hurdy-Gurdy, 
formerly of Red Dog. This gentleman, al- 
though a notable figure among miners, was 
nota miner. His knowledge of mining con- 
sisted mainly in a marvelous command of 
its slang, to which he made copious contribu- 
tions, enriching its vocabulary with a wealth 
of extraordinary phrases more remarkable for 
their aptness than their refinement, and which 
impressed the unlearned ‘‘tender-foot’’ with 
a lively sense of the profundity of their in- 
ventor’s acquirements. When not entertain- 
ing a circle of admiring auditors from San 
Francisco or the East he could commonly be 
found pursuing the comparatively obscure 
industry of sweeping out the various dance 
houses and purifying the spittoons. 

Barney had apparently but two passions in 
life—love of Jefferson Doman, who had once 
been of someservice to him,and love of whisky, 
which certainly had not. He had _ been 
among the first in the rush to Hurdy-Gurdy, 
but had not prospered, and had sunk by de- 


A HOLY TERROR. 209 


grees to the position of grave digger. This 
was not a vocation, but Barney in a desultory 
way turned his trembling hand to it whenever 
some local misunderstanding at the card table 
and his own partial recovery from a prolonged 
debauch occurred coincidently in point of 
time. One day Mr. Doman received, at Red 
Dog, a letter with the simple postmark, 
‘‘Hurdy, Cal.,’’? and being occupied with 
another matter, carelessly thrust it into a chink 
of his cabin for future perusal. Some two 
years later it was accidentally dislodged, and 
he read it. It ran as follows:— 


*“Hurpy, June 6. 
‘*FRIEND JEFF: I’ve hit her hard in the bone- 
yard. She’s blind and lousy. I’m onthe divvy— 
that’s me, and mum’s my lay till you toot. 
** Yours, BARNEY. 
“*P. S.—I’ve clayed her with Scarry.”’ 


With some knowledge of the general min- 
ing camp argot and of Mr. Bree’s private 
system for the communication of ideas, Mr. 
Doman had no difficulty in understanding by 
this uncommon epistle that Barney, while 
performing his duty as grave digger, had un- 
covered a quartz ledge with no outcroppings; 
that it was visibly rich in free gold; that, 
moved by considerations of friendship, he 


14 


210 A HOLY TERROR. 


was willing to accept Mr. Doman asa partner, 
and, pending that gentleman’s declaration of 
his will in the matter, would discreetly keep 
the discovery a secret. From the postscript. 
it was plainly inferable that, in order to con- 
ceal the treasure, he had buried above it the 
mortal part of a person named Scarry. 

From subsequent events, as related to Mr. 
Doman, at Red Dog, it would appear that 
before taking this precaution Mr. Bree had 
the thrift to remove a modest competency of 
the gold; at any rate, it was about that time 
that he entered upon that memorable series 
of potations and treatings which is still one of 
the cherished traditions of the San Juan 
Smith country, and is spoken of with respect 
as far away as Ghost Rock and Lone Hand. 
At its conclusion, some former citizens of 
Hurdy-Gurdy, for whom he had performed 
the last kindly office at the cemetery, made 
room for him among them, and he rested 
well. 

IV. 

Having finished staking off his claim, Mr. 
Doman walked back to the center of it and 
stood again at the spot where his search 
among the graves had expired in the excla- 
mation, ‘‘Scarry.’’ He bent again over the 


A HOLY TERROR. 2II 


headboard which bore that name, and, as if to 
re-inforce the senses of sight and hearing, 
ran his forefinger along the rudely-carved 
letters, and, re-erecting himself, appended 
orally to the simple inscription the shockingly 
forthright epitaph, ‘‘ She was a holy terror!’’ 

Had Mr. Doman been required to make 
these words good with proof—as, considering 
their somewhat censorious character, he doubt- 
less should have been—he would have found 
himself embarrassed by the absence of reputa- 
ble witnesses, and hearsay evidence would 
have been the best he could command. At 
the time when Scarry had been prevalent 
in the mining camps thereabout—when, as 
the editor of the Hurdy Herald would have 
phrased it, she was “in the plentitude of her 
power’’—Mr. Doman’s fortunes had been at a 
low ebb. and he had led the vagrantly labo- 
rious life of a prospector. His time had been 
mostly spent in the mountains, now with one 
companion, now with another. It was from 
the admiring recitals of these casual partners, 
fresh from the various camps, that his judg- 
ment of Scarry had been made up; himself 
had never had the doubtful advantage of her 
acquaintance and the precarious distinction of 
her favor. And when, finally, on the termi- 


212 A HOLY TERROR. 


nation of her perverse career at Hurdy- 
Gurdy, he had read in a chance copy of the 
Flerald her column-long obituary (written by 
the local humorist of that lively sheet in the 
highest style of his art), Doman had paid to 
her memory and to her historiographer’s 
genius the tribute of a smile, and chivalrously 
forgotten her. Standing now at the grave-side 
of this mountain Messalina, he recalled the 
leading events of her turbulent career, as he 
had heard them celebrated at his various 
camp fires, and, perhaps with an unconscious 
attempt at self-justification, repeated that she 
was a holy terror, and sank his pick into her 
grave up to the handle. At that momenta 
raven, which had silently settled upon a 
branch of the blasted tree above his head, 
solemnly snapped its beak and uttered its 
mind about the matter with an approving 
croak. 

Pursuing his discovery of free gold with 
great zeal, which he probably credited to his 
conscience as a grave digger, Mr. Barney Bree 
had made an unusually deep sepulcher, and it 
was near sunset before Mr. Doman, laboring 
with the leisurely deliberation of one who has 
a ‘‘dead sure thing’’ and no fear of an adverse 
claimant’ s enforcement of a prior right, reached 


A HOLY TERROR. 213 


the coffin and uncovered it. When he had 
done so, he was confronted by a difficulty for 
which he had made no provision; the coffin— 
a mere flat shell of not very well-preserved 
redwood boards, apparently—had no handles, 
andit filled the entire bottom of the excavation. 
The best he could do without violating the de- 
centsanctities of the situation, was to make the 
excavation sufficiently longer to enable him to 
stand at the head of the casket, and, getting his 
powerful hands underneath, erect it upon its 
narrower end; and this he proceeded to do. 
The approach of night quickened his efforts. 
He had no thought of abandoning his task at 
this stage, to resume it on the morrow under 
more advantageous conditions. The feverish 
stimulation of cupidity and the fascination of 
terror held him to his dismal work with an 
iron authority. He no longer idled, but 
wrought with a terrible zeal. His head un- 
covered, his upper garments discarded, his 
shirt opened at the neck and thrown back 
from his breast, down which ran sinuous rills 
of perspiration, this hardy and impenitent 
gold-getter and grave-robber toiled with a 
giant energy that almost dignified the char- 
acter of his horrible purpose, and when the 
sun fringes had burned themselves out along 


214 A HOLY TERROR, 


the crest line of the western hills, and the full 
moon had climbed out of the shadows that 
lay along the purple plain, he had erected the 
coffin upon its foot, where it stood propped 
against the end of the open grave. Then, as 
the man, standing up to his neck in the earth 
at the opposite extreme of the excavation, 
looked at the coffin upon which the moon- 
light now fell with a full illumination, he was 
thrilled with a sudden terror to observe upon 
it the startling apparition of a dark human 
head—the shadow of his own. For a moment 
this simple and natural circumstance un- 
nerved him. The noise of his labored breath- 
ing frightened him, and he tried to still it, but 
his bursting lungs would not be denied. 
Then, laughing half audibly and wholly with- 
out spirit, he began making movements of 
his head from side to side, in order to com- 
pel the apparition to repeat them. He found 
a comforting reassurance in asserting his com- 
mand over his own shadow. He was tempo- 
rizing, making, with unconscious prudence, a 
dilatory opposition to an impending catas- 
trophe. He felt that invisible forces of evil 
were closing in upon him, and he parleyed 
for time with the Inevitable. 

He now observed in succession several ex- 


A HOLY TERROR. 215 


traordinary circumstances. The surface of 
the coffin upon which his eyes were fastened 
was not flat; it presented two distinct ridges, 
one longitudinal and the other transverse. 
Where these intersected at the widest part, 
there was a corroded metallic plate that re- 
flected the moonlight with a dismal luster. 
Along the outer edges of the coffin, at long 
intervals, were rust-eaten heads of nails. 
This frail product of the carpenter's art had 
been put into the grave the wrong side up! 

- Perhaps it was one of the humors of the 
camp—a practical manifestation of the face- 
tious spirit that had found literary expression 
in the topsy-turvy obituary notice from the 
pen of Hurdy-Gurdy’s great humorist. Per- 
haps it had some occult personal signification 
impenetrable to understandings uninstructed 
in local traditions. A more charitable hy- 
pothesis is that it was owing to a misadventure 
on the part of Mr. Barney Bree, who, making 
the interment unassisted, either by choice for 
the conservation of his golden secret, or 
through public apathy, had committed a 
blunder which he was afterward unable or 
unconcerned to rectify. However it had 
come about, poor Scarry had indubitably 
been put into the earth face downward, 


216 A HOLY TERROR, 


When terror and absurdity make alliance, 
the effect is frightful. This strong-hearted 
and daring man, this hardy night worker 
among the dead, this defiant antagonist of 
darkness and desolation, succumbed to a 
ridiculous surprise. He was smitten with a 
thrilling chill—shivered, and shook his mass- 
ive shoulders as if to throw off an icy hand. 
He no longer breathed, and the blood in his 
veins, unable to abate its impetus, surged 
hotly beneath his cold skin. Unleavened 
with oxygen, it mounted to his head and con- 
gested his brain. His physical functions had 
gone over to the enemy; his very heart was 
arrayed against him. He did not move; he 
could not have cried out. He needed buta 
coffin to be dead—as dead as the death that 
confronted him with only the length of an 
open grave and the thickness of a rotting 
plank between. 

Then, one by one, his senses returned; the 
tide of terror that had overwhelmed his facul- 
ties began to recede. But with the return of 
his senses he became singularly unconscious 
of the object of his fear. He saw the moon- 
light gilding the coffin, but no longer the cof- 
fin that it gilded. Raising his eyes and turn- 
ing his head, he noted, curiously and with 


A HOLY TERROR. 217 


surprise, the black branches of the dead tree, 
and tried to estimate the length of the weather- 
worn rope that dangled from its ghostly hand. 
The monotonous barking of distant coyotes 
affected him as something he had heard years 
agoinadream. An owl flapped awkwardly 
above him on noiseless wings, and he tried 
to forecast the direction of its flight when it 
should encounter the cliff that reared its illu- 
minated front a mile away. His hearing took 
account of a gopher’s stealthy tread in the 
shadow of the cactus. He was intensely ob- 
servant; his senses were all alert; but he saw 
not the coffin. As one can gaze at the sun 
until it looks black and then vanishes, so 
his mind, having exhausted its capacities of 
dread, was no longer conscious of the sep- 
arate existence of anything dreadful. The 
Assassin was cloaking the sword. 

It was during this lull in the battle that he 
became sensible of a faint, sickening odor. 
At first he thought it was that of a rattlesnake, 
and involuntarily tried to look about his feet. 
They were nearly invisible in the gloom of 
the grave. A hoarse, gurgling sound, like 
the death-rattle in a human throat, seemed 
to come out of the sky, and a moment later 
a great, black, angular shadow, like the same 


218 A HOLY TERROR, 


sound made visible, dropped curving from 
the topmost branch of the spectral tree, flut- 
tered for an instant before his face, and sailed 
fiercely away into the mist along the creek. 
It was araven. The incident recalled him to 
a sense of the situation, and again his eyes 
sought the upright coffin, now illuminated by 
the moon for half its length. He saw the 
gleam of the metallic plate, and tried without 
moving to decipher the inscription. Then 
he fell to speculating upon what was behind 
it. His creative imagination presented him a 
vivid picture. The planks no longer seemed 
an obstacle to his vision, and he saw the livid 
corpse of the dead woman, standing in grave- 
clothes, and staring vacantly at him, with lid- 
less, shrunken eyes. The lower jaw wasfallen, 
the upper lip drawn away from the uncovered 
teeth. He could make out a mottled pattern 
on the hollow cheeks—the maculations of de- 
cay. By some mysterious process, his mind 
reverted for the first time that day to the pho- 
tograph of Mary Matthews. He contrasted 
its blonde beauty with the forbidding aspect 
of this dead face—the most beloved object 
that he knew with the most hideous that he 
could conceive. 

The Assassin now advanced, and, displaying 


A HOLY TERROR. 219 


the blade, laid it against the victim’s throat. 
That is to say, the man became at first dimly, 
then definitely, aware of an impressive coinci- 
dence—a relation—a parallel, between the 
face on the card and the name on the head- 
board. The one was disfigured, the other 
described a disfiguration. The thought took 
hold of him and shook him. It transformed 
the face that his imagination had created be- 
hind the coffin lid; the contrast became a 
resemblance; the resemblance grew to iden- 
tity. Remembering the many descriptions of 
Scarry’s personal appearance that he had 
heard from the gossips of his camp fire, he 
tried with imperfect success to recall the ex- 
act nature of the disfiguration that had given 
the woman her ugly name; and what was 
lacking in his memory, fancy supplied, stamp- 
ing it with the validity of conviction. In the 
maddening attempt to recall such scraps of 
the woman’s history as he had heard, the 
muscles of his arms and hands were strained 
to a painful tension, as by an effort to lift a 
great weight. His body writhed and twisted 
with the exertion. The tendons of his neck 
stood out as tense as whip cords, and his 
breath came in short, sharp gasps. The ca- 
tastrophe could not be much longer delayed, 


220 A HOLY TERROR. 


or the agony of anticipation would leave 
nothing to be done by the coup de grace of 
verification. The scarred face behind the 
coffin lid would slay him through the wood. 

A movement of the coffin calmed him. It 
came forward to within a foot of his face, 
growing visibly larger as itapproached. The 
rusted metallic plate, with an inscription illeg- 
ible in the moonlight, looked him steadily in 
the eye. Determined not to shrink, he tried 
to brace his shoulders more firmly against the 
end of the excavation, and nearly fell back- 
ward in the attempt. There was nothing to 
support him; he had advanced upon his 
enemy, clutching the heavy knife that he had 
drawn from his belt. The coffin had not 
moved, and he smiled to think it could not 
retreat. Lifting his knife, he struck the 
heavy hilt against the metal plate with all his 
power. There was a sharp, ringing percus- 
sion, and witha dull clatter the whole decayed 
coffin lid broke in pieces and came away, fall- 
ing about his feet. The quick and the dead 
were face to face—the frenzied, shrieking man 
—the woman standing tranquil in a het silences 
She was a holy terror! 

V. 
Some months later a party of men and 


A HOLY TERROR. 221 


women belonging to the highest social circles 
of San Francisco passed through Hurdy- 
Gurdy on their way to the Yosemite Valley 
by a new trail. They halted there for dinner, 
and, pending its preparation, explored the des- 
olate camp. One of the party had been at 
Hurdy-Gurdy in the days of its glory. He 
had, indeed, been one of its prominent citi- 
zens; and it used to be said that more money 
passed over his faro table in any one night 
than over those of all his competitors in a 
week; but being now a millionaire engaged 
in greater enterprises, he did not deem these 
early successes of sufficient importance to 
merit the distinction of remark. His invalid 
wife, a lady famous in San Francisco for the 
costly nature of her entertainments and her 
exacting rigor with regard to the social posi- 
tion and antecedents of those who attended 
them, accompanied the expedition. During 
a stroll among the abandoned shanties of the 
abandoned camp, Mr. Porfer directed the at- 
tention of his wife and friends to a dead tree 
on a low hill beyond Injun Creek. 

‘As I told you,’’ he said, ‘“‘I passed 
through this camp in 18—, and was told that 
no fewer than five men had been hanged here 
by Vigilantes at various times, and all on that 


222 A HOLY TERROR, 


tree. If I am not mistaken, a rope is dan- 
gling from it yet. Let us go overand see the 
place.’’ 

Mr. Porfer did not add that the rope in 
question was perhaps the very one from whose 
fatal embrace his own neck had once had an 
escape so narrow that an hour’s delay in tak- 
ing himself out of that region would have 
spanned it. 

Proceeding leisurely down the creek to a 
convenient crossing, the party came upon the 
cleanly-picked skeleton of an animal, which 
Mr. Porfer, after due examination, pronounced 
to be that of anass. The distinguishing ears 
were gone, but much of the inedible head had 
been spared by the beasts and birds, and the. 
stout bridle of horsehair was intact, as was the 
riata, of similar material, connecting it with a 
picket pin still firmly sunken in the earth. 
The wooden and metallic elements of a miner’s 
kit lay near by. The customary remarks 
were made, cynical on the part of the gentle- 
men, sentimental and refined by the lady. A 
little later they stood by the tree in the ceme- 
tery, and Mr. Porfer sufficiently unbent from 
his dignity to place himself beneath‘the rotten 
rope and confidently lay a coil of it about his 
neck, somewhat, it appeared, to his own sat- 
isfaction, but greatly to the horror of his wife, 


rea: 


A HOLY TERROR. 223 


to whose sensibilities the performance gave a 
smart shock. 

An exclamation from one of the party gath- 
ered them all about an open grave, at the 
bottom of which they saw a confused mass of 
human bones, and the broken remnants of a 
coffin. Wolves and buzzards had performed 
the last sad rites for pretty much all else. 
Two skulls were visible, and, in order to in- 
vestigate this somewhat unusual redundancy, 
one of the younger gentlemen had the hardi- — 
hood to spring into the grave and hand them 
up to another before Mrs. Porfer could in- 
dicate her marked disapproval of so shock- 
ing an act, which, nevertheless, she did with 
considerable feeling and in very choice words. 
Pursuing his search among the dismal débris 
at the bottom of the grave, the young gentle- 
man next handed up a rusted coffin plate, with 
a rudely-cut inscription, which, with difficulty, 
Mr. Porfer deciphered and read aloud with an 
earnest and notaltogether unsuccesstul attempt 
at the dramatic effect which he deemed befit- 
ting to the occasion and his rhetorical abilities: 

MANUELITA Murpnuy. 
Born at the Mission San Pedro—Died in 
Hurdy-Gurdy, 
Aged 47. 
flell’s full of such, 


224 A HOLY TERROR. 


In deference to the piety of the reader and the 
nerves of Mrs. Porfer’s fastidious sisterhood of 
both sexes let us not touch upon the painful im- 
pression produced by this uncommon inscrip- 
tion, further than to say that the elocutionary 
powers of Mr. Porfer had never before met 
with such spontaneous and overwhelming 
recognition. 

The next morsel that rewarded the ghoul 
in the grave was a long tangle of black hair, 
defiled with clay; but this was such an anti- 
climax that it received little attention. Sud- 
denly, with a short exclamation and a gesture 
of excitement, the young man unearthed a 
fragment of grayish rock, and after a hurried 
inspection handed it up to Mr. Porfer. As 
the sunlight fell upon it, it glittered with a 
yellow luster—it was thickly studded with 
gleaming points. Mr. Porfer snatched it, 
bent his head over it a moment, and threw 
it lightly away, with the simple remark:— 

‘Tron pyrites—fool’s gold.”’ 

The young man in the discovery shaft was 
a trifle disconcerted, apparently. 

Meanwhile Mrs. Porfer, unable longer to 
endure the disagreeable business, had walked 
back to the tree and seated herself at its root. 
While rearranging a tress of golden hair, which 


A HOLY TERROR. 225 


had slipped from its confinement, she was at- 
tracted by what appeared to be, and really 
was, the fragment of an old coat. Looking 
about to assure herself that so unladylike an 
act was not observed, she thrust her jeweled 
hand into the exposed pocket, and drew out 
a moldy pocket-book. Its contents were as 
follows :— 

One bundle of letters, postmarked Eliza- 
bethtown, New Jersey. 

One circle of blonde hair tied with a ribbon. 

One photograph of a beautiful girl. 

One ditto of same, singularly disfigured. 

One name on back,of photograph—‘ Jeft- 
erson Doman.”’ 

A few moments later a group of anxious 
gentlemen surrounded Mrs. Porfer as she sat 
motionless at the foot of the tree, her head 
dropped forward, her fingers clutching a 
crushed photograph. Her husband raised 
her head, exposing a face ghastly white, ex- 
cept the long, deforming cicatrice, familiar to 
all her friends, which no art could ever hide, 
and which now traversed the pallor of her 
countenance like a visible curse. 

Mary Matthews Porfer had the bad luck to 
be dead. 


15 


THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS. 


THE NIGHT. 


NE midsummer night a farmer’s boy liv- 
ing about ten miles from the city of Cin- 
cinnati, was following a bridle path through 
a dense and dark forest. He had been search- 
ing for some missing cows, and at nightfall 
found himself a long way from home, and in 
a part of the country with which he was but 
partly familiar. But he was a stout-hearted 
lad, and, knowing his general direction from 
his home, he plunged into the forest without 
hesitation, guided by the stars. Coming into 
the bridle path, and observing that it ran in 
the right direction, he followed it. 

The night was clear, but in the woods it 
was exceedingly dark. It was more by the 
sense of touch than by that of sight that the 
lad kept the path. He could not, indeed, 
very easily go astray; the undergrowth on 
both sides was so thick as to be almost im- 
penetrable. He had gone into the forest a mile 
or more when he was surprised to see a fee- 


(227) 


228 THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS. 


ble gleam of light shining through the foliage 
skirting the path on his left. The sight of it 
startled him, and set his heart beating audi- 
bly. 

‘‘The old Breede house is somewhere 
about here,’’ he said to himself. ‘‘This must 
be the other end of the path which we reach 
it by from our side. Ugh! what should a light 
be doing there? I don’t like it.”’ 

Nevertheless, he pushed on. A moment 
later and he had emerged from the forest into 
a small, open space, mostly upgrown to bram- 
bles. There were remnants of a rotting 
fence. A few yards from the trail, in the 
middle of the clearing, was the house, from 
which the light came through an unglazed 
window. The window had once contained 
glass, but that and its supporting frame had 
long ago yielded to missiles flung by hands 
of venturesome boys, to attest alike their 
courage and their hostility to the supernatu- 
ral; for the Breede house bore the evil repu- 
tation of being haunted. Possibly it was not, 
but even the hardiest skeptic could not deny 
that it was deserted—which, in rural regions, 
is much the same thing. 

Looking at the mysterious dim light shin- 
ing from the ruined window, the boy remem- 


THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS, 229 


bered with apprehension that his own hand 
had assisted at the destruction. His penitence 
was, of course, poignant in proportion to its 
tardiness and inefficacy. He half expected 
to be set upon by all the unworldly and bodi- 
less malevolences whom he had outraged by 
assisting to break alike their windows and 
their peace. Yet this stubborn lad, shaking 
in every limb, would not retreat. The blood 
in his veins was strong and rich with the iron 
of the frontiersman. He was but two removes 
from the generation which had subdued the 
Indian. He started to pass the house. 

As he was going by, he looked in at the 
blank window space, and saw a strange and 
terrifying sight,—the figure of a man seated 
in the center of the room, at a table upon 
which lay some loose sheets of paper. The 
elbows rested on the table, the hands sup- 
porting the head, which was uncovered. On 
each side the fingers were pushed into the 
hair. The face showed pale in the light of 
a single candle a little to one side. The 
flame illuminated that side of the face, the 
other was in deep shadow. The man’s eyes 
were fixed upon the blank window space with 
a stare in which an older and cooler observer 
might have discerned something of apprehen- 


230 THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS. 


sion, but which seemed to the lad altogether 
soulless. He believed the man to be dead. 
The situation was horrible, but not without 
its fascination. The boy paused in his flight 
to note it all. He endeavored to still the 
beating of his heart by holding his breath un- 
til half suffocated. He was weak, faint, trem- 
bling; he could feel the deathly whiteness of 
his face. Nevertheless, he set his teeth and 


resolutely advanced to the house. He had’ 


no conscious intention,—it was the mere 
courage of terror. He thrust his white face 
forward into the illuminated opening. At 
that instant a strange, harsh cry, a shriek, 
broke upon the silence of the night,—the 
note of a screech owl. The man sprang to 
his feet, overturning the table and extinguish- 
ing the candle. The boy took to his heels. 


THE DAY BEFORE. 


‘‘Good-morning, Colston. I am in luck, it 
seems. You have often said that my com- 
mendation of your literary work was mere 
civility, and here you find me absorbed —actu- 
ally merged—in your latest story in the Js- 
senger. Nothing less shocking ‘than your 
touch upon my shoulder would have roused 
me to consciousness, ’’ 


THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS, 231 


‘‘The proof is stronger than you seem to 
know,’’ replied the man addressed; ‘‘so keen 
is your eagerness to read my story that you 
are willing to renounce selfish considerations 
and forego all the pleasure that you could get 
from it.”’ 

“T don’t understand you,”’ said the other, 
folding the newspaper that he held, and put- 
ting itin his pocket. ‘‘ Youwriters are a queer 
lot, anyhow. Come, tell me what I have done 
or omitted in this matter. In what way does 
the pleasure that I get, or might get, from your 
work depend on me ?’’ 

‘In many ways. Let meask you how you 
would enjoy your dinner if you took it in this 
street car. Suppose the phonograph so per- 
fected as to be able to give you an entire 
opera,—singing, orchestration, and all; do 
you think you would get much pleasure out 
of it if you turned it on at your office during 
business hours? Do you really care for a 
serenade by Shubert when you hear it fiddled 
by an untimely Italian on a morning ferry- 
boat? Are you always cocked and primed 
for admiration? Do you keep every mood 
on tap, ready to any demand? Let me re- 
mind you, sir, that the story which you have 
done me the honor to begin as a means of 


232 THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS. 


becoming oblivious to the discomfort of this 
street car is a ghost story !”’ 

‘“Well?”’ ; 

‘Well! Has the reader no duties corre- 
sponding to his privileges? You havepaid five 
cents for that newspaper. It is yours. You 
have the right to read it when and where you 
will. Much of what is in it is neither helped 
nor harmed by time, and place, and mood; 
some of it actually requires to be read at 
once—while it is fizzing. But my story is 
not of that character. It is not the ‘very 
latest advices’ from Ghost Land. You are not 
expected to keep yourself az courant with 
what is going on in the realm of spooks. 
The stuff will keep until you have leisure to 
put yourself into the frame of mind appro- 
priate to the sentiment of the piece—which I 
respectfully submit that you cannot do in a 
street car, even if you are the only passenger. 
The solitude is not of the right sort. An au- 
thor has rights which the reader is bound 
to respect.”’ 

‘For specific example?”’ 

‘*The right to the reader’s undivided atten- 
tion. To deny him this is immoral. To 
make him share your attention with the rattle 
of a street car, the moving panorama of the 


THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS. 233 


crowds on the sidewalks, and the buildings 
beyond—with any of the thousands of dis- 
tractions which make our customary environ- 
ment—is to treat him with gross injustice. 
By God, it is infamous!’ 

The speaker had risen to his feet, and was 
steadying himself by one of the straps hang- 
ing from the roof of the car. The other man 
looked up at him in sudden astonishment, 
wondering how so trivial a grievance could 
seem to justify so strong language. He saw 
that his friend’s face was uncommonly pale, 
and that his eyes glowed like living coals. 

‘*You know what I mean,’’ continued the 
writer, impetuously, crowding his words— 
**You know what I mean, Marsh. My stuff 
in this morning’s Afessenger is plainly sub- 
headed ‘A Ghost Story.’ That is ample no- 
tice to all. Every honorable reader will un- 
derstand it as prescribing by implication the 
conditions under which the work is to be 
read.”’ 

The man addressed as Marsh winced a tri- 
fle, then asked with a smile: ‘‘ What condi- 
tions? You know that I am only a plain 
business man, who cannot be supposed to un- 
derstand such things. How, when, where 
should I read your ghost story ?’’ 


234 THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS. 


‘‘In solitude—at night—by the light of a 
candle. There are certain emotions which a 
writer can easily enough excite—such as 
compassion or merriment. .I can move you 
to tears or laughter under almost any circum- 
stances. But for my ghost story to be effect- 
ive you must be made to feel fear—at least 
a strong sense of the supernatural—and that is 
a different matter. I have a right to expect 
that if you read me at all you will give me a 
chance; that you will make yourself accessi- 
ble to the emotion which I try to inspire.”’ 

The car had now arrived at its terminus 
and stopped. The trip just completed was its 
first for the day, and the conversation of the 
two early passengers had not been inter- 
rupted. The streets were yet silent and 
desolate; the house tops were just touched 
by the rising sun. As they stepped from the 
car and wa‘ked away together Marsh narrowly 
eyed his companion, who was reported, like 
most men of uncommon literary ability, to be 
addicted to various destructive vices. That 
is the revenge which dull minds take upon 
bright ones in resentment of their superiority. 
Mr. Colston was known as a man of genius. 
There are honest souls who believe that 
genius is a mode of excess, It was known 


THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS. 235 


that Colston did not drink liquor, but many 
said that he ate opium. Something in his 
appearance that morning—a certain wildness 
of the eyes, an unusual pallor, a thickness. 
and rapidity of speech—were taken by Mr. 
Marsh to confirm the report. Nevertheless, 
he had not the self-denial to abandon a sub- 
ject which he found interesting, however it 
might excite his friend. 

“Do you mean to say,’’ he began, ‘‘that 
if I take the trouble to observe your direc- 
tions—place myself in the condition which 
you demand: solitude, night and a tallow can- 
dle—you can with your ghastliest work give 
me an uncomfortable sense of the super- 
natural, as you call it? Can you accelerate 
my pulse, make me start at sudden noises, 
send a nervous chill along my spine, and 
cause my hair to rise?”’ 

Colston turned suddenly and looked him 
squarely in the eyes as they walked. ‘You 
would not dare—you have not the courage,”’ 
he said. He emphasized the words with a 
contemptuous gesture. ‘‘You are brave 
enough to read me ina street car, but—ina 
deserted house—alone—in the forest—at 
night! Bah! I have a ‘manuscript in my 
pocket that would kill you.”’ 


ws 
> 


236 THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS 


Marsh was angry. He knew himself a 
man of courage, and the words stung him. 
“If you know such a place,’’ he said, ‘‘ take 
me there to-night and leave me your story 
and a candle. Call for me when I’ve had 
time enough to read it, and I'll tell you the 
entire plot and—kick you out of the place.” 

That is how it occurred that the farmer’s 
boy, looking in at an unglazed window of the 
Breede house, saw a man sitting in the light 
of a candle. 

THE DAY AFTER. 

Late in the afternoon of the next day three 
men and a boy approached the Breede house 
from that point of the compass toward which 
the boy had fled the preceding night. They 
were in high spirits apparently; they talked 
loudly and laughed They made facetious and 
good-humored ironical remarks to the boy 
about his adventure, which evidently they 
did not believe in. The boy accepted their 
raillery with seriousness, making no reply. 
He had a sense of the fitness of things, and 
knew that one who professes to have seen a 
dead man rise from his seat and blow out a 
candle is not a credible witness. 

Arrived at the house, and finding the door 
bolted on the inside, the party of investigators 


THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS. 237 


entered without further ceremony than break- 
ingitdown. Leading out of the passage into 
which this door had opened was another 
on the right and one on the left. These two 
doors also were fastened, and were broken in. 
They entered at random the one on the left 
first. It was vacant. In the room on the 
right—the one which had the blank front 
window—was the dead body of a man. 

It lay partly on one side, with the forearm 
beneath it, the cheek on the floor. The eyes 
were wide open; the stare was not an agreea- 
ble thing to encounter. The lower jaw had 
fallen; a little pool of saliva had collected be- 
neath the mouth. An overthrown table, a 
partly-burned candle, a chair, and some pa- 
per with writing on it, were all else that the 
room contained. The men looked at the 
body, touching the face in turn. The boy 
gravely stood at the head, assuming a look 
of ownership. It was the proudest moment 
of his life. One of the men said to him, 
‘*You’re a good ’un’’—a remark which was 
received by the two others with nods of ac- 
quiescence. It was Skepticism apologizing 
to Truth. Then one of the men took from 
the floor the sheets of manuscript and stepped 
to the window, for already the evening 


238 THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS. 


shadows were glooming the forest. The 
song of the whip-poor-will was heard in the 
distance, and a monstrous beetle sped by the 
window on roaring wings, and thundered 
away out of hearing. 


THE MANUSCRIPT. 


‘‘Before committing the act which, rightly 
or wrongly, I have resolved on, and appear- 
ing before my Maker for judgment, I, James 
R. Colston, deem it my duty asa journalist to 
make a statement to the public. My name 
is, I believe, tolerably well known to the peo- 
pleas a writer of tragic tales, but the somber- 
est imagination never conceived anything so 
gloomy as my own life and history. Not in 
incident: my life has been destitute of ad- 
venture and action. But my mental career 
has been lurid with experiences such as kill 
and damn. I shall not recount them here— 
some of them are written and ready for publi. 
cation elsewhere. The object of these lines is 
to explain to whomsoever may be interested 
that my death is voluntary—my own act. I 
shall die at twelve o’clock on the night of the 
15th of July—a significant anniversary to 
me, for it was on that day, and at that hour, 
that my friend in time and eternity, Charles 


. 


THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS. 239 


Breede, performed his vow to me by the 
same act which his fidelity to our pledge now 
entails upon me. He took his life in his lit- 
tle house in the Copeton woods. There was 
the customary verdict of ‘temporary insanity.’ 
Had I testified at that inquest—had I told all 
I knew, they would have called me mad ! 

“T have still a week of life in which to ar- 
range my worldly affairs, and prepare for the 
greatchange. Itis enough, for I have but few 
affairs, and it is now four years since death 
became an imperative obligation. 

‘*T shall bear this writing on my body; the 
finder will please hand it to the coroner. 

‘James R. CoLstTon. 

‘*P, S.—Willard Marsh, on this the fatal 
fifteenth day of July, I hand you this manu- 
script, to be opened and read under the condi- 
tions agreed upon, and at the place which I 
designate. I forego my intention to keep it on 
my body to explain the manner of my death, 
which is not important. It will serve to ex- 
plain the manner of yours. I am to call for 
you during the night to receive assurance 
that you have read the manuscript. You 
know me well enough to expect me. But, 
my friend, it wil/ be after twelve o'clock. May 
God have mercy on our souls !”’ 

viel & R. Sighs 


240 THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS. 


Before the man who wis reading this manu- 
script had finished, the candle had been 
picked up and lighted. When the reader 
had done, he quietly thrust the paper against 
the flame, and despite the prostestations of 
the others held it until it was burnt to ashes. 
The man who did this, and who placidly en- 
dured a severe reprimand from the coroner, 
was a son-in-law of the late Charles Breede. 
At the inquest nothing could elicit an intelli- 
gible account of what the paper contained. 

FROM THE ‘‘TIMES.”’ 

‘‘Yesterday the Commissioners of Lunacy 
committed to the asylum Mr. James R. Col- 
ston, a writer of some local reputation, con- 
nected with the Messenger. It will be remem- 
bered that on the evening of the 15th inst. 
Mr. Colston was given into custody by one of 
his fellow-lodgers in the Baine House, who 
had observed him acting very suspiciously, 
baring his throat and whetting a razor—oc- 
casionally trying its edge by actually cutting 
through the skin of his arm, etc. On being 
handed over to the police, the unfortunate 
man made a desperate resistance and has 
ever since been so violent that it has been 
necessary to keep him in a strait-jacket. 
Most of our esteemed contemporary’s other 
writers are still at large.”’ 


AN INHABITANT OF CARCOSA. 


For there be divers sorts of death—some wherein 
the body remaineth; and in some it vanisheth 
quite away with the spirit. This commonly oc- 
cureth only in solitude (such is God’s will) and, 
none seeing the end, we say the man is lost, or 

one on a long journey—which indeed he hath; 

ut sometimes it hath happened in sight of many, 
as abundant testimony showeth. In one kind of 
death the spirit also dieth, and this it hath been 
known to do while yet the body was in vigor for 
many years. Sometimes, as is veritably attested, 
it dieth with the body, but after a seasonit is raised 
up again in that place that the body did decay. 


ONDERING these words of Hali (whom 

God rest) and questioning their full mean- 
ing, as one who, having an intimation yet 
doubts if there be not something behind other 
than that which he has discerned, I noted 
not whither I had strayed until a sudden 
chill wind striking my face revived in me a 
sense of my surroundings. I observed with 
astonishment that everything seemed unfamil- 
iar. On every side of me stretched a bleak 
and desolate expanse of plain, covered with a 
tall overgrowth of sear grass, which rustled 
and whistled in the autumn wind with heaven 


16 (241) 


242 AN INHABITANT OF CARCOSA. 


knows what mysterious and disquieting sug- 
gestion. Protruded at long intervals above 
it, stood strangely-shaped and somber-colored 
rocks, which seemed to have an understand- 
ing with one another and to exchange looks 
of uncomfortable significance, as if they had 
reared their heads to watch the issue of some 
foreseen event. A few blasted trees here and 
there appeared as leaders in this malevolent 
conspiracy of silent expectation. The day, I . 
thought, must be far advanced, though the 
sun was invisible; and although sensible that 
the air was raw and chill, my consciousness 
of that fact was rather mental than physical— 
I had no feeling of discomfort. Over all the 
dismal landscape a canopy of low, lead- 
colored clouds hung like a visible curse. In 
everything there were a menace anda portent 
—a hint of crime, an intimation of doom. 
Bird, beast, or insect there was none. The 
wind sighed in the bare branches of the dead 
trees and the gray grass bent to whisper its 
dread secret to the earth; but no other sound 
or motion broke the awful repose of that dis- 
mal place. 

I observed in the herbage a number of 
weather-worn stones, evidently shaped with 
tools, They were broken, covered with 


AN INHABITANT OF CARCOSA. 243 


moss and half sunken in the earth. Some 
lay prostrate, some leaned at various angles, 
none were vertical. They were obviously 
headstones of graves, though the graves them- 
selves no longer existed as either mounds or 
depressions; the years had leveled all. Scat- 
tered here and there, more massive blocks 
showed where some pompous tomb or ambi- 
tious monument had once flung its feeble de- 
fiance at oblivion. So old seemed these relics, 
these vestiges of vanity and memorials of af- 
fection and piety—so battered and worn and 
stained, so neglected, deserted, forgotten the 
place, that I could not help thinking myself 
the discoverer of the burial-ground of a pre- 
historic race of men—a nation whose very 
name was long extinct. 

Filled with these reflections, I was for some 
time heedless of the sequence of my own ex- 
periences, but soon I thought, ‘‘ How came I 
hither?’’ A moment’s reflection seemed to 
make this all clear, and explain at the same 
time, though in a disquieting way, the singu- 
larly weird character with which my fancy 
had invested all that I saw and heard. I was 
ill. I remembered now how I had been pros- 
trated by a sudden fever, and how my family 
had told me that in my periods of delirium I 


244 AN INHABITANT OF CARCOSA. 


had constantly cried out for liberty and air, 
and had been held in bed to prevent my es- 
cape out-of-doors. Now I had eluded the 
vigilance of my attendants, and had wandered 
hither to—to where? I could not conjecture. 
Clearly I was at a considerable distance from 
the city where I dwelt—the ancient and fa- 
mous city of Carcosa. No signs of human 
life were anywhere visible or audible; no ris- 
ing smoke, no watchdog’s bark, no lowing 
of cattle, no shouts of children at play—noth- 
ing but this dismal burial-place, with its air of 
mystery and dread, due to my own disor- 
dered brain. Was I not becoming again delir- 
ious, there, beyond human aid? Was it not 
indeed a// an illusion of my madness? I 
called aloud the names of my wife and sons, 
reached out my hands in search of theirs, even 
as I walked among the crumbling stones and 
in the withered grass. 

A noise behind me caused me to turn 
about. <A wild animal—a lynx—was ap- 
proaching. The thought came to me: If I 
break down here in the desert—if the fever 
returns and [ fail, this beast will be at my 
throat. I sprang toward it, shouting. It 
trotted tranquilly by, within a hand’s breadth 
of me, and disappeared behind a rock. A 


AN INHABITANT OF CARCOSA, 245 


moment later a man’s head appeared to rise 
out of the ground a short distance away. He 
was ascending the far slope of a Jow hill whose 
crest was hardly to be distinguished from the 
general level. His whole figure soon came 
into view against the background of gray 
cloud. Hewas half naked, half clad in skins. 
His hair was unkempt, his beard long and 
ragged. In one hand he carried a bow and 
arrow; the other held a blazing torch with a 
long trail of black smoke. He walked slowly 
and with caution, as if he feared falling into 
some open grave concealed by the tall grass, 
This strange apparition surprised but did not 
alarm, and, taking such a course as to inter. 
cept him, I met him almost face to face, ac- 
costing him with the salutation, ‘‘God keep 
you!”’ 

He gave no heed, nor did he arrest his pace. 

“‘Good stranger,’ I continued, ‘‘I am ill 
and lost. Direct me, I beseech you, to Car- 
cosa?’”’ 

The man broke into a barbarous chant in 
an unknown tongue, passing on and away. 
An owl on the branch of a decayed tree 
hooted dismally, and was answered by another 
in the distance. Looking upward I saw, 
through a sudden rift in the clouds, Alde- 


246 AN INHABITANT OF CARCOSA. 


baran and the Hyades! In all this there was 
a hint of night—the lynx, the man with a 
torch, the owl. Yet I saw—I saw even the 
stars in absence of the darkness. I saw, but 
was apparently not seen nor heard. Under 
what awful spell did I exist? 

I seated myself at the root of a great tree, 
seriously to consider what it was best to do. 
That I was mad I could no longer doubt, yet 
recognized a ground of doubt in the convic- 
tion. Of fever I had no trace. I had, withal, 
a sense of exhilaration and vigor altogether 
unknown to me—a feeling of mental and phys- 
ical exaltation. My senses seemed all alert; 
I could feel the air as a ponderous substance, 
I could hear the silence. 

A great root of the giant tree against whose 
trunk I leaned as I sat, held inclosed in its 
grasp a slab of granite, a portion of which 
protruded into a recess formed by another 
root. The stone was thus partly protected 
from the weather, though greatly decomposed. 
Its edges were worn round, its corners eaten 
away, its face deeply furrowed and scaled. 
Glittering particles of mica were visible in the 
earth beneath it—vestiges of its decomposition. 
This stone had apparently marked the grave 
out of which the tree had sprung ages ago. 


AN INHABITANT OF CARCOSA. 247 


The tree’s exacting roots had robbed the 
grave and made the stone a prisoner. 

A sudden wind pushed some dry leaves and 
twigs from the uppermost face of the stone; I 
saw the low-relief letters of an inscription and 
bent to read it. God in heaven! my name in 
full!—the date of my birth!—the date of my 
death! 

A level shaft of rosy light illuminated the 
whole side of the tree as I sprang to my fect 
in terror. The sun was rising in the east. I 
stood between the tree and his broad red disk 
—no shadow darkened the trunk! A chorus 
of howling wolves saluted the dawn. I saw 
them sitting on their haunches, singly and in 
groups, on the summits of irregular mounds 
and tumuli, filling a half of my desert pros- 
pect and extending to the horizon; and then 
I knew that these were the ruins of the an- 
cient and famous city of Carcosa. 


Such are the facts imparted to the medium 
Bayrolles by the spirit Hoseib Alar Robardin. 


ae 
: : 


THE BOARDED WINDOW. 


c 


Dd 


ie 1830, only a few miles back from what is 
now the great city of Cincinnati, lay an 
immense and almost unbroken forest. The 
whole region was sparsely settled by people 
of the frontier—restless souls who no sooner 
had hewn fairly comfortable homes out of the 
wilderness and attained to that degree of pros- 
perity which to-day we should call indigence 
than, impelled by some mysterious impulse 
of their nature, they abandoned all and pushed 
further westward, to encounter new perils and 
privations in the effort to regain comforts 
which they had voluntarily renounced. Many 
of them had already forsaken that region for 
the remoter settlements, but among those re- 
maining was one who had been of those first 
arriving. He lived alone in a house of logs, 
surrounded on all sides by the great forest, of 
whose gloom and silence he seemed a part, 
for no one had ever known him to smile nor 
speak a needless word. His simple wants, 
were supplied by the sale or barter of skins of 


(249) 


250 THE BOARDED WINDOW. 


wild animals in the river town, for not a thing 
did he grow upon the land which he might, 
if needful, have claimed by right of undis- 

turbed possession. There were evidences of 
- “Gmprovement’’—a few acres of ground im- 
mediately about the house had once been 
cleared of its trees, the decayed stumps of 
which were half concealed by the new growth 
that had been suffered to repair the ravage 
wrought by the ax at some distant day. Ap- 
parently the man’s zeal for agriculture had 
burned with a failing flame, expiring in peni- 
tential ashes. 

The little log house, with its chimney of 
sticks, its roof of warping clapboards weighted 
with traversing poles and its ‘‘chinking’’ of 
clay, had a single door, and, directly opposite, 
a window. The latter, however, was boarded 
up—nobody could remember a time when it 
was not. And none knew why it was so 
closed; certainly not because of the occu- 
pant’s dislike of light and air, for on those 
rare occasions when a hunter had passed that 
lonely spot, the recluse had commonly been 
seen sunning himself on his doorstep if heaven 
had provided sunshine for his need. I fancy 
there are few persons living to-day who ever 
knew the secret of that window, but I am one, 
as in due time you shall see, 


THE BOARDED WINDOW. 251 


The man’s name was said to be Murlock. 
He was apparently seventy years old, actu- 
ally about fifty. Something besides years 
had had a hand in his aging. His hair and 
long, full beard were white, his gray, lusterless 
eyes sunken, his face singularly seamed with 
wrinkles, which appeared to belong to two in- 
tersecting systems, In figure he was tall and 
spare, with a stoop of the shoulders—a bur- 
den bearer. I never saw him; these particu- 
lars I learned from my grandfather, from 
whom also I got the story when I was a lad. 
He had known him when living near by in 
that early day. 

One day Mr. Murlock was found in his 
cabin, dead. It was not a time and place for 
coroners and newspapers, and I suppose it 
was agreed that he had died from natural 
causes or I should have been told, and should 
remember. I only know that, with what was 
probably a sense of the fitness of things, the 
body was buried near the cabin, alongside the 
grave of his wife, who had preceded him 
by so many years that local tradition had 
retained hardly a hint of her existence. 
That closes the final chapter of this true 
story—excepting, indeed, the circumstance 
that many years afterward, in company with 


252 THE BOARDED WINDOW. 


an equally intrepid spirit, I penetrated to the 
place and ventured near enough to the ruined 
cabin to throw a stone against it, and ran 
away to avoid the ghost which every well- 
informed boy thereabout knew haunted the 
spot. As this record grows naturally out of 
my personal relation to what it records, that 
circumstance, as a part of the relation, has 
a certain relevancy. But there is an earlier 
chapter—that supplied by my grandfather. 

When Mr. Murlock built his cabin and be- 
gan laying sturdily about with his ax to hew 
out a farm—the rifle, meanwhile, his means 
of support—he was young, strong, and full of 
hope. In that Eastern country whence he 
came he had married, as was the fashion, a 
young woman in all ways worthy of his hon- 
est devotion, who shared the dangers and 
privations of his lot with a willing spirit and 
light heart. There is no known record of ° 
her name; of her charms of mind and person 
tradition is silent and the doubter is at liberty 
to entertain his doubt; but God forbid that I 
should share it! Of their affection and hap- 
piness there is abundant assurance in every 
added day of the man’s widowed life; for 
what but the magnetism of a blessed memory 
could have chained that venturesome spirit 
to a lot like that? 


THE BOARDED WINDOW. 253 


One day Murlock returned from gunning 
in a distant part of the forest to find his wife 
prostrate with fever and delirious. There 
was no physician within miles, no neighbor, 
nor was she in a condition to be left, to sum- 
mon help. So he set about the task of nurs- 
ing her back to health, but at the end of the 
third day she passed into a comatose state, 
and so passed away, with never a gleam of | 
returning reason. 

From what we know of a nature like his 
we may venture to sketch in some of the de- 
tails of the outline picture drawn by my 
grandfather. When convinced that she was 
dead, Murlock had sense enough to remem- 
ber that the dead must be prepared for bur- 
ial. In performance of this sacred duty he 
blundered now and again, did certain things 
incorrectly, and others which he did correctly 
were done over and over. His occasional 
failures to accomplish some simple and ordi- 
nary act filled him with astonishment, like 
that of a drunken man who wonders at the 
suspension of familiar natural laws. He was 
surprised, too, that he did not weep—surprised 
and a little ashamed; surely it is unkind not to 
weep for the dead, ‘‘To-morrow,”’ he said 
aloud, ‘‘I shall have to make the coffin and 


254 THE BOARDED WINDOW, 


dig the grave; and then I shall miss her, 
when she is no longer in sight, but now— 
she is dead, of course, but it is all right—it 
must be all right, somehow. Things cannot 
be as bad as they seem.”’ 

He stood over the body in the fading light, 
adjusting the hair and putting the finishing 
touches on the simple toilet, doing all me- 
chanically, with soulless care. And _ still 
through his consciousness ran an undersense 
of conviction that all was right—that he should 
have her again as before, and everything ex- 
plained. He had had no experience in grief; 
his capacity had not been enlarged by use. 
His heart could not contain it all, nor his 
imagination rightly conceive it. He did not 
know he was so hard hit; that knowledge 
would come later, and never go. Grief is an 
artist of powers as various as the characters 
of the instruments upon which he plays his 
dirges for the dead, evoking from some the 
sharpest, shrillest notes, from others the low, 
grave chords that throb recurrent like the 
slow beating of a distant drum. Some na- 
tures it startles; some it stupefies. _To one it 
comes like the stroke of an arrow, stinging all 
the sensibilities to a keener life; to another 
as the blow of a bludgeon, which in crushing 


THE BOARDED WINDOW. 255 


benumbs. We may conceive Murlock to 
have been that way affected, for (and here 
we are upon surer ground than that of con- 
jecture) no sooner had he finished his pious 
work than, sinking into a chair by the side 
of the table upon which the body lay, and 
noting how white the profile showed in the 
deepening gloom, then laying his arms upon 
the table’s edge, he dropped his face into 
them, tearless yet and unutterably weary. At 
that moment came in through the open win- 
dow a long, wailing sound like the cry of a 
lost child in the far deeps of the darkening 
wood! But the man did not move. Again 
and nearer than before sounded that unearthly 
cry upon his failing sense. Perhaps it was a 
wild beast; perhaps it was a dream; for Mur- 
lock was asleep. 

Some hours later, as it afterward appeared, 
this unfaithful watcher awoke, and, lifting his 
head from his arms, intently listened—he knew 
notwhy. There in the black darkness by the 
side of his dead, recalling all without a shock, 
he strained his eyes to see—he knew not 
what. His senses all were alert, his breath 
was suspended, his blood had stilled its tides 
as if to assist the silence. Who—what had 
waked him, and where was it? 


256 THE BOARDED WINDOW. 


Suddenly the table shook beneath his arms, 
and at the same moment he heard, or fancied 
that he heard, a light, soft step—another— 
sounds as of bare feet upon the floor! 

He was terrified beyond the power to cry 
out or move. Perforce he waited—waited 
there in the darkness through centuries of 
such dread as one may know yet live to tell. 
He tried vainly to speak the dead woman’s 
name, vainly to stretch forth his hand across 
the table to learn if she were there. His 
throat was powerless, his arms and hands 
were like lead. Then occurred something 
most. frightful. Some heavy body seemed 
hurled against the table with an impetus that 
pushed it against his breast so sharply as 
nearly to overthrow him, and at the same 
instant he heard and felt the fall of something 
upon the floor with so violent a thump that 
the whole house was shaken by the impact. 
Then ensued a scuffling and a confusion of 
sounds impossible to describe. Murlock had 
risen to his feet, and terror had by excess for- 
feited control of his faculties. He flung his 
hands upon the table. Nothing was there! 

There is a point at which terror may turn 
to madness; and madness incites to action. 
With no definite intent, from no motive but 


THE BOARDED WINDOW. 257 


the wayward impulse of a madman, Murlock 
sprang to the wall, and with a little groping 
seized his loaded rifle, and without aim dis- 
charged it. By the flash which lit up the 
room with a vivid illumination, he saw an 
enormous panther dragging the dead woman 
toward the window, its teeth fixed in her 
throat! Then there were darkness blacker 
than before, and silence; and when he re- 
turned to consciousness the sun was high and 
the woods vocal with songs of birds. 

The body lay near the window, where the 
beast had left it when frightened away by the 
flash and report of the rifle. The clothing 
was deranged, the long hair in disorder, the 
limbs lay anyhow. From the throat, dread- 
fully lacerated, had issued a pool of blood not 
yet entirely coagulated. The ribbon with 
which he had bound the wrists was broken; 
the hands were tightly clenched. Between 
the teeth was a fragment of the animal's ear. 


17 


ned 


BS ree 


.. 


THE MIDDLE TOE OF THE RIGHT 
FOOT. 


T is well known that the old Manton house 
is haunted. In all the rural district near 
about, and even in the town of Marshall, a 
mile away, not one person of unbiased mind 
entertains a doubt of it; incredulity is confined 
to those opinionated people who will be called 
*‘cranks’’ as soon as the useful word shall 
have penetrated the intellectual demesne of 
the Marshall Advance. The evidence that the 
house is haunted is of two kinds: the testi- 
mony of disinterested witnesses who have had 
ocular proof, and that of the house itself. The 
former may be disregarded and ruled out on 
any of the various grounds of objection which 
may be urged against it by the ingenious; 
but facts within the observation of all are fun- 
damental and controlling. 

In the first place, the Manton house has 
been unoccupied by mortals for more than 
ten years, and with its outbuildings is slowly 
falling into decay—a circumstance which in 
itself the judicious will hardly venture to ig- 


(259) 


260 THE MIDDLE TOE 


nore. It stands a little way off the loneliest 
reach of the Marshall and Harriston road, in 
an opening which was once a farm and is still 
disfigured with strips of rotting fence and 
half covered with brambles overrunning a 
stony and sterile soil long unacquainted with 
the plow. The house itself is in tolerably 
good condition, though badly weather-stained 
and in dire need of attention from the glazier, 
the smaller male population of the region 
having attested in the manner of its kind its 
disapproval of dwellings without dwellers. 
The house is two stories in height, nearly 
square, its front pierced by a single doorway 
flanked on each side by a window boarded up 
to the very top. Corresponding windows 
above, not protected, serve to admit light and 
rain to the rooms of the upper floor. Grass 
and weeds grow pretty rankly all about, and 
a few shade trees, somewhat the worse for 
wind and leaning all in one direction, seem 
to be making a concerted effort to run away. 
In short, as the Marshall town humorist ex- 
plained in the columns of the Advance, ‘‘the 
proposition that the Manton house is badly 
haunted is the only logical conclusion from 
the premises.’”’ The fact that in this dwelling 
Mr. Manton thought it expedient one night 


OF THE RIGHT FOOT. 261 


some ten years ago to rise and cut the throats 
of his wife and two small children, removing 
at once to another part of the country, has no 
doubt done its share in directing public atten- 
tion to the fitness of the place for supernatural 
phenomena. 

To this house, one summer evening, came 
four men in a wagon. Three of them 
promptly alighted, and the one who had been 
driving hitched the team to the only remain- 
ing post of what had beena fence. The fourth 
remained seated in the wagon. ‘‘Come,”’ 
said one of his companions, approaching him, 
while the others moved away in the direction 
of the dwelling—‘‘ this is the place.’’ 

The man addressed was deathly pale and 
trembled visibly. ‘‘By God!’’ hesaid harshly, 
“this is a trick, and it looks to me as if you 
were in it.”’ 

**Perhaps I am,”’ the other said, looking 
him straight in the face and speaking in a 
tone which had something of contempt in it. 
“You will remember, however, that the 
choice of place was, with your own assent, left 
to the other side. Of course if you are afraid * 
of spooks—’’ 

‘I am afraid of nothing,’’ the man inter- 
rupted with another oath, and sprang to the 


262 THE MIDDLE TOE 


ground. The two then joined the others at 
the door, which one of them had already 
opened with some difficulty, caused ‘by rust 
of lock and hinge. All entered. Inside it 
was dark, but the man who had unlocked the 
door produced a candle and matches and 
made a light. Hethen unlocked a door on 
their right as they stood in the passage. This 
gave them entrance to a large, square room, 
which the candle but dimly lighted. The 
floor had a thick carpeting of dust, which 
partly muffled their footfalls. Cobwebs were 
in the angles of the walls and depended from 
the ceiling like strips of rotting lace, making 
undulatory movements in the disturbed air. 
The room had two windows in adjoining sides, 
but from neither could anything be seen ex- 
cept the rough inner surfaces of boards a few 
inches from the glass. There was no fire- 
place, no furniture; there was nothing. Be- 
sides the cobwebs and the dust, the four men 
were the only objects there which were not a 
part of the architecture. Strange enough they 
looked in the yellow light of the candle. The 
“one who had so reluctantly alighted was es- 
pecially ‘‘spectacular’’—he might have been 
called sensational. He was of middle age, 
heavily built, deep chested and broad shoul- 


OF THE RIGHT FOOT. 263 


dered. Looking at his figure, one would 
have said that he had a giant’s strength; at 
his face, that he would use it like a giant. 
He was clean shaven, his hair rather closely 
cropped and gray. His low forehead was 
seamed with wrinkles above the eyes, and 
over the nose these became vertical. The 
heavy black brows followed the same law, 
savec from meeting only by an upward turn 
at what would otherwise have been the point 
of contact. Deeply sunken beneath these, 
glowed in the obscure light a pair of eyes of 
uncertain color, but, obviously enough, too 
small. There was something forbidding in 
their expression, which was not bettered by 
the cruel mouth and wide jaw. The nose 
was well enough, as noses go; one does not 
expect much of noses. All that was sinister 
in the man’s face seemed accentuated by an 
unnatural pallor—he appeared altogether 
bloodless. 

The appearance of the other men was suf- 
ficiently commonplace: they were such per- 
sons as one meets and forgets that he met. 
All were younger than the man described, 
between whom and the eldest of the others, 
who stood apart, there was apparently no 
kindly feeling. They avoided looking at one 
another, ; 


264 THE MIDDLE TOE 


’ 


‘‘Gentlemen,”’ said the man holding the 
candle and keys, ‘‘I believe everything is 
right. Are you ready, Mr. Rosser?”’ 

The man standing apart from the group 
bowed and smiled. 

‘‘And you, Mr. Grossmith?”’ 

The heavy man bowed and scowled. 

‘*You will please remove your outer cloth- 
ing.” 

Their hats, coats, waistcoats, and neckwear 
were soon removed and thrown outside the 
door, in the passage. The man with the 
candle now nodded, and the fourth man— 
he who had urged Mr. Grossmith to leave 
the wagon—produced from the pocket of his 
overcoat two long, murderous-looking bowie 
knives, which he drew from the scabbards. 

‘They are exactly alike,’’ he said, present- 
ing one to each of the two principals—for by 
this time the dullest observer would have 
understood the nature of this meeting. It 
was to be a duel to the death. 

Each combatant took a knife, examined it 
critically near the candle and tested the 
strength of blade and handle across his lifted 
knee. Their persons were then searched in 
turn, each by the second of the other. 

‘*If it is agreeable to you, Mr, Grossmith,”’ 


_ OF THE RIGHT FOOT. 265 


said the man holding the light, ‘‘you will 
place yourself in that corner.”’ 

He indicated the angle of the room farthest 
from the door, to which Grossmith retired, his 
second parting from him with a grasp of the 
hand which had nothing of cordiality in it. 
In the angle nearest the door Mr. Rosser 
stationed himself, and, after a whispered con- 
sultation, his second left him, joining the other 
near the door. At that moment the candle 
was suddenly extinguished, leaving all in pro- 
found darkness. This may have been done 
by a draught from the opened door; whatever 
the cause, the effect was appalling! 

‘‘Gentlemen,’’ said a voice which sounded 
strangely unfamiliar in the altered condition 
affecting the relations of the senses, ‘‘gentle- 
men, you will not move until you hear the 
closing of the outer door.”’ 

A sound of trampling ensued, the closing 
of the inner door; and finally the outer one 
closed with a concussion which shook the en- 
tire building. _ 

A few minutes’ later a belated farmer’s boy 
met a wagon which was being driven furiously 
toward the town of Marshall. He declared 
that behind the two figures on the front seat 
stood a third with its hands upon the bowed 


266 THE MIDDLE TOE 


shoulders of the others, who appeared ‘to 
struggle vainly to free themselves from its 
grasp. This figure, unlike the others, was 
clad in white, and had undoubtedly boarded 
the wagon as it passed the haunted house. 
As the lad could boast a considerable former 
experience with the supernatural thereabout, 
his word had the weight justly due to the tes- 
timony of an expert. The story eventually 
appeared in the Advance, with some sligh: 
literary embellishments and a concluding it. 
timation that the gentlemen referred to wouic 
be allowed the use of the paper’s columns for 
their version of the night’s adventure. But 
the privilege remained without a claimant. 


II. 


The events which led up to this ‘‘duel in 
the dark’’ were simple enough. One even- 
ing three young men of the town of Marshall 
were sitting in a quiet corner of the porch of 
the village hotel, smoking and discussing such 
matters as three educated young men of a 
Southern village would naturally find interest- 
ing. Their names were King, Sancher, and 
Rosser. At a little distance, within easy 
hearing but taking no part in the conversation, 
sat afourth. He wasa stranger to the others, 


OF THE RIGHT FOOT. 267 


They merely knew that on his arrival by the 
stage coach that afternoon he had written in 
the hotel register the name Robert Grossmith. 
He had not been observed to speak to any- 
one except the hotel clerk. He seemed, in- 
deed, singularly fond of his own company— 
or, as the ersonne/ of the Advance expressed 
it, ‘‘grossly addicted to evil associations.” 
But then it should be said in justice to the 
stranger that the Jersonne/ was himself of a 
too convivial disposition fairly to judge one 
differently gifted, and had, moreover, experi- 
enced a slight rebuff in an effort at an ‘‘inter- 
view.” 

‘*T hate any kind of deformity in a woman,”’ 
said King, ‘‘whether natural or—or acquired. 
I have a theory that any physical defect has 
its correlative mental and moral defect.” 

‘*Tinfer, then,’’ said Rosser, gravely, ‘‘that 
a lady lacking the advantage of a nose would 
find the struggle to become Mrs. King an 
arduous enterprise.’’ 

‘*Of course you may put it that way,’’ was 
the reply; ‘‘but, seriously, I once threw over 
a most charming girl on learning, quite acci- 
dentally, that she had suffered amputation of 
a toe. My conduct was brutal, if you like, 
but if I had married that girl I should have 
been miserable and should have made her so.”’ 


268 THE MIDDLE Tok 


‘‘Whereas,’’ said Sancher, with a light 
laugh, ‘‘by marrying a gentleman of more 
liberal views she escaped with a cut throat.’’ 

‘‘Ah, you know to whom I refer! Yes, 
she married Manton, but I don’t know about 
his liberality; I’m not sure but he cut her 
throat because he discovered that she lacked 
that excellent thing in woman, the middle toe 
of the right foot.’’ 

‘‘Look at that chap!’’ said Rosser in a 
low voice, his eyes fixed upon the stranger. 

That person was obviously listening intently 
to the conversation, 

‘*Damn his impudence!”’ whispered King 
—‘‘what ought we to do?”’ 

‘*That’s an easy one,’’ Rosser replied, rising. 
‘*Sir,’’ he continued, addressing the stranger, 
**T think it would be better if you would 
remove your chair to the other end of the 
veranda. The presence of gentlemen is evi- 
dently an unfamiliar situation to you.”’ 

The man sprang to his feet and strode for- 
ward with clenched hands, his face white 
with rage. All were nowstanding. Sancher 
stepped between the belligerents. 

‘‘You are hasty and unjust,’’ he said to 
Rosser; ‘‘this gentleman has done nothing to 
deserve such language.’’ 


OF THE RIGHT FOOT. 269 


But Rosser would not withdraw a word. 
By the custom of the country and the time, 
there could be but one outcome to the quar- 
rel. 

**T demand the satisfaction due to a gentle- 
man,”’ said the stranger, who had become 
more calm. ‘‘I have not an acquaintance in 
this region. Perhaps you, sir,’’ bowing to 
Sancher, ‘‘will be kind enough to repre- 
sent me in this matter.”’ 

Sancher accepted the trust—somewhat re- 
luctantly, it must be confessed, for the man’s 
appearance and manner were not at all to his 
liking. King, who, during the colloquy, had 
hardly removed his eyes from the stranger’s 
face, and had not spoken a word, consented 
with a nod to act for Rosser, and the upshot 
of it was that, the principals having retired, 
a meeting was arranged for the next evening. 
The nature of the arrangements has been al- 
ready disclosed. The duel with knives in a 
dark room was once a commoner feature of 
Southwestern life than it is likely to be again. 
How thin a veneering of ‘“‘chivalry’’ covered 
the essential brutality of the code under which 
such encounters were possible, we shall see. 


270 THE MIDDLE TOE 


III. 


In the blaze of a midsummer noonday, the 
old Manton house was hardly true to its tra- 
ditions. It was of the earth, earthy. The 
sunshine caressed it warmly and affectionately, 
with evident unconsciousness of its bad repu- 
tation. The grass greening all the expanse 
in its front seemed to grow, not rankly, but 
with a natural and joyous exuberance, and 
the weeds blossomed quite like plants. Full 
of charming lights and shadows, and popu- 
lous with pleasant-voiced birds, the neglected 
shade trees no longer struggled to run away, 
but bent reverently beneath their burdens of 
sun and song. Even in the glassless upper 
windows was an expression of peace and con- 
tentment, due to the light within. Over the 
stony fields the visible heat danced with a 
lively tremor incompatible with the gravity 
which is an attribute of the supernatural, 

Such was the aspect under which the place 
presented itself to Sheriff Adams and two 
other men who had come out from Marshall 
to look at it. One of these men was Mr. 
King, the sheriff’s deputy; the other, whose 
name was Brewer, was a brother of the late 
Mrs. Manton. Under a beneficent law of the 
State relating to property which has been 


OF THE RIGHT FOOT. 271 


for a certain period abandoned by its owner, 
whose residence cannot be ascertained, the 
sheriff was the legal custodian of the Manton 
farm and the appurtenances thereunto belong- 
ing. His present visit was in mere perfunc- 
tory compliance with some order ofa court 
in which Mr. Brewer had an action to get 
possession of the property as heir to his de- 
ceased sister. By a mere coincidence the 
visit was made on the day after the night that 
Deputy King had unlocked the house for an- 
other and very different purpose. His pres- 
ence now was not of his own choosing: he 
had been ordered to accompany his superior, 
and at the moment could think of nothing 
more prudent than simulated alacrity in obe- 
dience. He had intended going anyhow, 
but in other company. 

Carelessly opening the front door, which to 
his surprise was not locked, the sheriff was 
amazed to see, lying on the floor of the 
passage into which it opened, a confused heap 
of men’s apparel. Examination showed it to 
consist of two hats, and the same number of 
coats, waistcoats, and scarves, all in a re- 
markably good state of preservation, albeit — 
somewhat defiled by the dust in which they 
lay. Mr. Brewer was equally astonished, but 


272 THE MIDDLE TOE 


Mr. King’s emotion is not of record. With a 
new and lively interest in his own actions, the 
sheriff now unlatched and pushed open a door 
on the right, and the three entered. The 
room was apparently vacant—no; as their 
eyes became accustomed to the dimmer light, 
something was visible in the farthest angle of 
the wall. It was a human figure—that of a 
man crouching close in the corner. Some- 
thing in the attitude made the intruders halt 
when they had barely passed the threshold. 
The figure more and more clearly defined it- 
self. The man was upon one knee, his back 
in the angle of the wall, his shoulders ele- 
vated to the level of his ears, his hands before 
his face, palms outward, the fingers spread 
and crooked like claws; the white face turned 
upward on the retracted neck had an expres- 
sion of unutterable fright, the mouth half open, 
the eyes incredibly expanded. He was stone 
dead—dead of terror! Yet, with the excep- 
tion ofa knife, which had evidently fallen from 
his own hand, not another object was in the 
room. 

In the thick dust which covered the floor 
were some confused footprints near the door 
~ and along the wall through which it opened. 
Along one of the adjoining walls, too, past 


OF THE RIGHT FOOT. 273 


the boarded-up windows, was the trail made 
by the man himself in reaching his corner. 
Instinctively in approaching the’ body the 
three men now followed that trail. The sher- 
iff grasped one of the outthrown arms; it was 
as rigid as iron, and the application of a gen- 
tle force rocked the entire body without alter- 
ing the relation of its parts. Brewer, pale 
with terror, gazed intently into the distorted 
face. ‘‘God of mercy!’’ he suddenly cried, 
‘it is Manton!”’ 

‘*You are right,’’ said King, with an evi- 
dent attempt at calmness: ‘‘I knew Manton. 
He then wore a full beard and his hair long, 
but this is he.’’ 

He might have added: ‘‘I recognized him 
when he challenged Rosser. I told Rosser 
and Sanchez who he was before we played 
him this horrible trick. When Rosser left 
this dark room at our heels, forgetting his 
clothes in the excitement, and driving away 
with us in his shirt—all through the discredit- 
able proceedings we knew whom we were 
dealing with, murderer and coward that he 
was!”’ 

But nothing of this did Mr. King say. 
With his better light he was trying to pene- 
trate the mystery of the man’s death. That 

18 


274 THE MIDDLE TOR 


he had not once moved from the corner 
where he had been stationed, that his posture 
was that of neither attack nor defense, that he 
had dropped his weapon, that he had obvi- 
ously perished of sheer terror of something 
that he saw—these were circumstances which 
Mr. King’s disturbed intelligence could not 
rightly comprehend. 

Groping in intellectual darkness for a clew 
to his maze of doubt, his gaze, directed me- 
chanically downward, as is the way of one 
who ponders momentous matters, fell upon 
something which, there, in the light of day, and 
in the presence of living companions, struck 
him with an invincible terror. In the dust of 
years that lay thick upon the floor—leading 
from the door by which they had entered, 
straight across the room to within a yard of 
Manton’s crouching corpse—were three par- 
allel lines of footprints—light but definite im- 
pressions of bare feet, the outer ones those of . 
small children, the inner a woman’s. From 
the point at which they ended they did not 
return; they pointed all one way. Brewer, 
who had observed them at the same moment, 
was leaning forward in an attitude of rapt at- 
tention, horribly pale. 

‘* Look at that!’’ he cried, pointing with 


OF THE RIGHT FOOT. 275 


both hands at the nearest print of the wom- 
an’s right foot, where she had apparently 
stopped and stood. ‘‘ The middle toe is 
missing—it was Gertrude!”’ 

Gertrude was the late Mrs. Manton, sister 
to Mr. Brewer. 


HAITA THE SHEPHERD. 


1 the heart of Haita the illusions of youth 
had not been supplanted by those of age 
and experience. His thoughts were pure and 
pleasant, for his life was simple and his soul 
devoid of ambition. He rose with the sun, 
and went forth to pray at the shrine of Has- 
tur, the god of shepherds, who heard and was 
pleased. After performance of this pious rite 
Haita unbarred the gate of the fold, and with 
a cheerful mind drove his flock afield, eating 
his morning meal of curds and oat cake as he 
went, occasionally pausing to add a few ber- 
ries, cold with dew, or to drink of the waters 
that came away from the hills to join the 
stream in the middle of the valley and be 
borne along with it, he knew not whither. 
During the long summer day, as his sheep 
cropped the good grass which the gods had 
made to grow for them, or lay with their fore- 
legs doubled under their breasts and indo- 
lently chewed the cud, Haita, reclining in the 
shadow of a tree, or sitting upon a rock, 


(277) 


—_ 


278 HAITA THE SHEPHERD. 


played so sweet music upon his reed pipe 
that sometimes from the corner of his eye he 
got accidental glimpses of the minor sylvan 
deities, leaning forward out of the copse to 
hear; but if he looked at them directly, they 
vanished. From this—for he must be think- 
ing if he would not turn into one of his own 
sheep—he drew the solemn inference that 
happiness may come if not sought, but if 
looked for will never be seen; for, next to the 
favor of Hastur, who never disclosed himself, 
Haita most valued the friendly interest of his- 
neighbors, the shy immortals of the wood and 
and stream. At nightfall he drove his flock 
back to the fold, saw that the gate was secure, 
and retired to his cave for refreshment and for 
dreams. 

So passed his life, one day like another, 
save when the storms uttered the wrath of an 
offended god. Then Haita cowered in his 
cave, his face hidden in his hands, and prayed 
that he alone might be punished for his sins 
and the world saved from destruction. Some- 
times when there was a great rain, and the 
stream came out of its banks, compelling him 
to. urge his terrified flock to the uplands, he 
interceded for the people in the great cities, 
which he had been told lay in the plain be- 


HAITA THE SHEPHERD. 279 


yond the two blue hills which formed the 
’ gateway of his valley. 

**Tt is kind of thee, O Hastur,’’ so he 
prayed, ‘‘to give me mountains so near to 
my dwelling and my fold that Iand my sheep 
can escape the angry torrents; but the rest 
of the world thou must thyself deliver in some 
way that I know not of, or I will no longer 
worship thee.”’ 

And Hastur, knowing that Haita was a 
youth who kept his word, spared the cities 
and turned fhe waters into the sea. 

So he had lived since he could remember. 
He could not rightly conceive any other mode 
of existence. The holy hermit who lived at 
the head of the valley, a full hour’s journey 
away, from whom he had heard the tale of the 
great cities where dwelt people—poor souls!— 
who had no sheep, gave him no knowledge 
of that early time, when, so he reasoned, he 
must have been small and helpless like a 
lamb. 

It was through thinking on these myster- 
ies and marvels, and on that horrible change 
to silence and decay which he felt sure must 
sometime come to him, as he had seen it 
come to so many of his flock—as it came to 
all living things except the birds—that Haita 


280 HAITA THE SHEPHERD. 


first became conscious how miserable was his 
lot. 

‘Tt is necessary,’’ he said, ‘‘that I know 
whence and how I came; for how can one 
perform his duties unless able to judge what 
they are by the way in which he was intrusted 
with them? And what contentment can I 
have when I know not how long it is going 
to last? Perhaps before another sun I may 
be changed, and then what will become of 
the sheep? What, indeed, will have become 
of me?”’ 

Pondering these things, Haita became mel- 
ancholy and morose. He no longer spoke 
cheerfully to his flock, nor ran with. alacrity 
to the shrine of Hastur. In every breeze he 
heard whispers of malign deities whose exist- 
ence he now first observed. Every cloud 
was a portent signifying disaster, and the 
darkness was full of new terrors. His reed 
pipe when applied to his lips gave out no 
melody but a dismal wail; the sylvan and ri- 
parian intelligences no longer thronged the 
thicket-side to listen, but fled from the sound, 
as he knew by the stirred leaves and bent 
flowers. He relaxed his vigilance, and many 
of his sheep strayed away into the hills and 
were lost. Those that remained became lean 


HAITA THE SHEPHERD. 281 


and ill for lack of good pasturage, for he 
would not seek it for them, but conducted 
them day after day to the same spot, through 
mere abstraction, while puzzling about life and 
death—of immortality he knew nothing. 

One day, while indulging in the gloomiest 
reflections, he suddenly sprang from the rock 
upon which he sat, and, with a determined 
gesture of the right hand, exclaimed: ‘‘I 
will no longer be a suppliant for knowledge 
which the gods withhold. Let them look to 
it that they do me no wrong. I will do my 
duty as best I can, and if I err, upon their 
own heads be it.”’ 

Suddenly, as he spoke, a great brightness 
fell about him, causing him to look upward, 
thinking the sun had burst through a rift in 
the clouds; but there were no clouds. Hardly 
more than an arm’s length away stood a 
beautiful maiden. So beautiful she was that 
the flowers about her feet folded their petals 
in despair and bent their heads in token of 
submission; so sweet her look that the hum- 
ming birds thronged her eyes, thrusting their 
thirsty bills almost into them, and the wild 
bees were about her lips. And such was her 
brightness that the shadows of all objects lay 
divergent from her feet, turning asshe moved. 


282 HAITA THE SHEPHERD, 


Haita was entranced. Rising, he knelt be- 
fore her in adoration, and she laid her hand 
upon his head. 

‘“‘Come,’’ she said in a voice which had 
the music of all the bells of his flock—‘‘ come, 
thou art not to worship me, who am no god- 
dess, but if thou art truthful and dutiful, I 
will abide with thee.”’ 

Haita seized her hand, and stammering his 
joy and gratitude arose, and hand in hand 
they stood and smiled in one another’s eyes. 
He gazed upon her with reverence and rap- 
ture. He said: ‘‘I pray thee, lovely maid, 
tell me thy name and whence and why thou 
comest.”’ 

At this she laid a warning finger on her lip 
and began to withdraw. Her beauty under- 
went a visible alteration that made him shud- 
der, he knew not why, for still she was beau- 
tiful. The landscape was darkened by a giant 
shadow sweeping across the valley with the 
speed’ of a vulture. In the obscurity the 
maiden’s figure grew dim and indistinct and 
her voice seemed to come from a distance, as 
she said, in a tone of sorrowful reproach: 
‘‘Presumptuous and ungrateful man! must I 
then so soon leave thee? Would nothing do 
but thou must at once break the eternal com- 
pact?”’ 


HAIT A THE SHEPHERD. 283 


Inexpressibly grieved, Haita fell upon his 
knees and implored her to remain—rose and 
sought her in the deepening darkness—ran * 
in circles, calling to her aloud, but all in vain. 
She was no longer visible, but out of the 
gloom he heard her voice saying: ‘‘ Nay, 
thou shalt not have me by seeking. Go to 
thy duty, icon shepherd, or we never 
meet again.”’ 

Night had fallen, the wolves were howling 
in the hills, and the terrified sheep crowding 
about his feet. In the demands of the hour 
he forgot his disappointment, drove his flock 
to the fold, and repairing to the place of wor- 
ship poured out his heart in gratitude to 
Hastur for permitting him to save his flock, 
then retired to his cave and slept. 

When Haita awoke, the sun was high and 
shone in at his cave, illuminating it with a 
great glory. And there, beside him, sat the 
maiden. She smiled upon him with a smile 
that seemed the visible music of his pipe of 
reeds. He dared not speak, fearing to offend 
her as before, for he knew not what he could 
venture to say. 

**Because,’’ she said, ‘‘thou didst thy duty 
by the flock, and didst not forget to thank 
Hastur for staying the wolves of the night, I 


284 HAITA THE SHEPHERD. 


am come to thee again. Wilt thou have me 
for a companion ?”’ 

‘Who would not have thee forever?’’ re- 
plied Haita. ‘‘Oh! never again leave me 
until—until I—change and become silent and 
motionless.’ 

Haita had no word for death. 

‘‘T wish, indeed,’’ he continued, ‘‘that 
thou wert of my own sex, that we might 
wrestle and run races and so never tire of 
being together.’ 

At these words the maiden arose and passed 
out of the cave, and Haita, springing from 
his couch of fragrant boughs to overtake and 
detain her, observed, to his astonishment, that 
the rain was falling and the stream in the 
middle of the valley had come out of its 
banks. The sheep were bleating in terror, 
for the rising waters had invaded their fold. 
And there was danger for the unknown cities 
of the distant plain. 

It was many days before Haita saw the 
maiden again. One day he was returning 
from the head of the valley, where he had 
gone with ewe’s milk and oat cake and ber- 
ries for the holy hermit, who was too old and 
feeble to provide himself with food. 

‘Poor old man!’’ he said aloud, as he 


HAITA THE SHEPHERD. 285 


trudged along homeward. ‘‘I will return to- 
morrow and bear him on my back to my own 
dwelling, where I can care for him. Doubt- 
less it is for that that Hastur has reared me all 
these years, and gives me healthand strengt! .”’ 

As he spoke, the maiden, clad in glittering 
garments, met him in the path with a smile 
which took away his breath. 

‘‘T am come again,”’ she said, ‘‘to dwell 
with thee if thou wilt now have me, for none 
else will. Thou mayest have learned wisdom, 
and art willing to take me as I am, nor care 
to know.”’ 

Haita threw himself at her feet. ‘‘ Beauti- 
ful being,’’ he cried, ‘‘if thou wilt but deign 
to accept all the devotion of my heart and 
soul—after Hastur be served—it is yours for- 
ever. But, alas! thou art capricious and way- 
ward. Before to-morrow’s sun I may lose 
thee again. Promise, I beseech thee, that 
however in my ignorance I may offend, thou’ 
wilt forgive and remain always with me.”’ 

Scarcely had he finished speaking when a 
troop of wolves sprang out of the hills, and 
came racing toward him with crimson mouths 
and fiery eyes. The maiden again vanished, 
and he turned and fled for his life. Nor did 
he stop until he was in the cot of the holy 


286 HAITA THE SHEPHERD. 


hermit, whence he had set out. Hastily bar- 
ring the door against the wolves, he cast him- 
self upon the ground and wept. 

‘*My son,”’ said the hermit from his couch 
of straw, freshly gathered that morning by 
Haita’s hands, ‘‘it is not like thee to weep for 
wolves—tell me what sorrow has befallen thee, 
that age may minister to the hurts of youth 
with such balms as it hath of its wisdom.’’ 

Haita told him all: how thrice he had met 
the radiant maid, and thrice she had left him 
forlorn. He related minutely all that had 
‘passed between them, omitting no word of 
what had been said. 

When he had ended, the holy hermit was 
a moment silent, then said: ‘‘ Myson, I have 
attended to thy story, and I know the maiden. 
I have myself seen her, as have many. Know, 
then, that her name, which she would not 
even permit thee to inquire, is Happiness. 
Thou saidst the truth to her, that she was ca- 
pricious, for she imposes conditions that man 
cannot fulfill, and delinquency is punished by 
desertion. She cometh only when unsought, 
and will not be questioned. One manifesta- 
tion of curiosity, one sign of doubt, one ex- 
pression of misgiving, and she is away! How 
long didst thou have her at any time before 
she fled?’’ 


HAITA THE SHETHERD, 287 


‘But a single instant,’’ answered Haita, 
blushing with shame at the confession. ‘‘Each 
time I drove her away in one moment.”’ 

**Unfortunate youth!’’ said the holy her- 
mit, ‘‘but for thine indiscretion thou mightst 
have had her for two.”’ 


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AN HEIRESS FROM REDHORSE. 


CORONADO, June 20. 


I find myself more and more interested in 
him. It is not, I amsure, his—do you know 
any noun corresponding to the adjective 
*‘handsome’’? One does not like to say 
‘‘beauty’’ when speaking of a man. He is 
handsome enough, heaven knows; I should 
not even care to trust you with him—faithful- 
est of all possible wives that you are—when 
he looks his best, as he always does. Nor do 
I think the fascination of his manner has 
much to do with it. You recollect that the 
charm of art inheres in that which is undefin- 
able, and to you and me, my dear Irene, I 
fancy there is rather less of that in the branch 
of art under consideration than to girls in 
their first season. I fancy I know how my 
fine gentleman produces many of his effects, 
and could, perhaps, give him a pointer on 
heightening them. Nevertheless, his manner 
is something truly delightful. I suppose what 
interests me chiefly is the man’s brains. His 


19 (289) 


290 AN HEIRESS FROM REDHORSE 


conversation is the best I have ever heard, and 
altogether unlike anyone’s else. He seems to 
know everything, as, indeed, he ought, for he 
has been everywhere, read everything, seen 
all there is to see—sometimes I think rather 
more than is good for him—and had acquaint- 
ance with the gueerest people. And then his 
voice—Irene, when I hear it I actually feel as 
if I ought to have pazd at the door, though of 
course it is my own door. 
July 3. 

I fear my remarks about Dr. Barritz must 
have been, being thoughtless, very silly, or 
you would not have written of him with such 
levity, not to say disrespect. Believe me, 
dearest, he has more dignity and seriousness 
(of the kind, I mean, which is not inconsist- 
ent with a manner sometimes playful and al- 
ways charming) than any of the men that you 
and I ever met. And young Raynor—you 
knew Raynor at Monterey—tells me that the 
men all like him, and that he is treated with 
something like deference everywhere. There 
is a mystery, too—something about his con- 
nection with the Blavatsky people in North- 
ern India. Raynor either would not or could 
not tell me the particulars, I infer that Dr. 
Barritz is thought—don’t you dare to laugh 


AN HEIRESS FROM REDHORSE 291 


—a magician! Could anything be finer than 
that? An ordinary mystery is not, of course, 
as good asa scandal, but when it relates to 
dark and dreadful practices—to the exercise 
of unearthly powers—could anything be more 
piquant? It explains, too, the singular in- 
fluence the man has upon me. It is the un- 
definable in his art—black art. Seriously, 
dear, I quite tremble when he looks me full 
in. the eyes with those unfathomable orbs of 
his, which I have already vainly attempted to 
describe to you. How dreadful if he have the 
power to make one fall in love! Do you 
know if the Blavatsky crowd have that power 
—outside of Sepoy? 
July 16. 

The strangest thing! Last evening while 
Auntie was attending one of the hotel hops (I 
hate them) Dr. Barritz called. It was scan- 
dalously late—I actually believe he had talked 
with Auntie in the ballroom, and learned from 
her that I was alone. I had been all the 
evening contriving how to worm out of him 
the truth about his connection with the 7’ 
in Sepoy, and all of that black busin 
the moment he fixed his eyes on me (for i ac. 
mitted him, I’m ashamed to say) I was help- 
less, I trembled, I blushed, I—O Irene, Irene, 


292 AN HEIRESS FROM REDHORSE. 


I love the man beyond expression, and you 
know how it is yourself! 

Fancy! I, an ugly duckling from Redhorse 
—daughter (they say) of old Calamity Jim— 
certainly his heiress, witheno living relation 
but an absurd old aunt, who spoils mea thou- 
sand and fifty ways—absolutely destitute of 
everything but a million dollars and a hope 
in Paris,—I daring to love a god like him! 
My dear, if I had you here, I could tear your 
hair out with mortification. 

I am convinced that he is aware of my feel- 
ing, for he stayed but a few moments, said 
nothing but what another man might have 
said half as well, and pretending that he had 
an engagement went away. I learned to- 
day (a little bird told me—the bell bird) that 
he went straight to bed. How does that 
strike you as evidence of exemplary habits? 

July 17. 

That little wretch, Raynor, called yesterday, 
and his babble set me almost wild. He never 
runs down—that is to say, when he extermin- 
ates a score of reputations, more or less, he 
does not pause between one reputation and 
the next. (By the way, he inquired about 
you, and his manifestations of interest in you 
had, I confess, a good deal of vraisemblance.) 


AN HEIRESS FROM REDHORSE. 293 


Mr. Raynor observes no game laws; like 
Death (which he would inflict if slander were 
fatal) he has all seasons for his own. But I 
like him, for we knew one another at Red- 
horse when we were young and true-hearted 
and barefooted. He was known in those far 
fair days as ‘‘ Giggles,’’and I—O Irene, can 
you ever forgive me ?—I was called ‘‘ Gunny.” 
God knows why; perhaps in allusion to the 
material of my pinafores; perhaps because 
the name is in alliteration with ‘‘ Giggles,”’ 
for Gig and I were inseparable playmates, and 
the miners may have thought it a delicate 
compliment to recognize some kind of rela- 
tionship between us. 

Later, we took in a third—another of Ad- 
versity’s brood, who, like Garrick between 
Tragedy and Comedy, had a chronic inability 
to adjudicate the rival claims (to himself) of 
Frost and Famine. Between him and the 
grave there was seldom anything more than 
a single suspender and the hope of a meal 
which would at the same time support life and 
make it insupportable. He literally picked 
up a precarious living for himself and an aged 
mother by ‘‘ chloriding the dumps,’’ that is to 
say, the miners permitted him to search the 
heaps of waste rock for such pieces of ‘‘ pay 


294 AN HEIRESS FROM REDHORSE. 


ore’’ as had been overlooked; and these he 
sacked up and sold at the Syndicate Mill. 
He became a member of our firm—‘‘ Gunny, 
Giggles, and Dumps’’ thenceforth--through 
my favor; for I could not then, nor can I now, 
be indifferent to his courage and prowess in 
defending against Giggles the immemorial 
right of his sex to insult a strange and unpro- 
tected female—myself. After old Jim struck 
it in the Calamity, and I began to wear shoes 
and go to school, and in emulation Giggles 
took to washing his face, and became Jack 
Raynor, of Wells, Fargo & Co., and old Mrs. 
Barts was herself chlorided to her fathers, 
Dumps drif.ed over to San Juan Smith and 
turned stage driver, and was killed by road 
agents, and so forth. 

Why do I tell you all this, dear? Because 
it is heavy on my heart. Because I walk 
the Valley of Humility. Because I am sub- 
duing myself to permanent consciousness of 
my unworthiness to unloose the lachet of Dr. 
Barritz’s shoe. Because, oh dear, oh dear, 
there’s a cousin of Dumps at this hotel! I 
haven’t spoken to him. I never had any ac- 
quaintance with him, but—do you suppose 
he has recognized me? Do, please, give me 
in your next your candid, sure-enough opin- 


AN HEIRESS FROM REDHORSE, 2c5 


ion about it, and say you don’t think so. Do 
you think He knows about me already and 
that that is why He left me last evening when 
He saw that I blushed and trembled like a 
fool under His eyes? You know I can’t bribe 
ail the newspapers, and I can’t go back on 
anybody who was good to Gunny at Red- 
horse—not if I’m pitched out of society into 
the sea. So the skeleton sometimes rattles 
behind the door. I never cared much before, 
as you know, but now—zow it is not the 
same. Jack Raynor! am sure of—he will 
not tell him. He seems, indeed, to hold him 
in such respect as hardly to dare speak to 
him at all, and I’m a good deal that way my- 
self. Dear, dear! I wish I had something be- 
sides a million dollars! If Jack were three 
inches taller I'd marry him alive and go back 
to Redhorse and wear sackcloth again to the 
end of my miserable days. 
July 25. 

We had a perfectly splendid sunset last 
evening, and I must tell you all about it. I 
ran away from Auntie and everybody, and 
was walking alone on the beach. I expect 
you to believe, you infidel! that I had not 
looked out of my window on the seaward side 
of the hotel and seen him walking alone on 


266 AN HEIRESS FROM REDHORSE. 


the beach. If you are not lost to every feel- 
ing of womanly delicacy you will accept my 
statement without question. I soon estab- 
lished myself under my sunshade and had 
for some time been gazing out dreamily over 
the sea, when he approached, walking close 
to the edge of the water—it was ebb tide. I 
assure you the wet sand actually brightened 
about his feet! As he approached me, he 
lifted his hat, saying, ‘‘Miss Dement, may 
I sit with you?—or will you walk with me?’’ 

The possibility that neither might be agree- 
able seems not to have occurred to him. Did 
you ever know such assurance? Assurance? 
My dear, it was gall, downright ga/// Well, 
I didn’t find it wormwood, and replied, with 
my untutored Redhorse heart in my throat, 
‘‘I—I shall be pleased to do anything.”’ 
Could words have been more stupid? There 
are depths of fatuity in me, friend o’ my soul, 
which are simply bottomless! 

He extended his hand, smiling, and I de- 
livered mine into it without a moment’s hesi- 
tation, and when his fingers closed about it to 
assist me to my feet, the consciousness that it 
trembled made me blush worse than the red 
west. I got up, however, and, after a while, 
observing that he had not let go my hand, 


AN HEIRESS FROM REDHORSE. 297 


I pulled on it a little, but unsuccessfully. He 
simply held on, saying nothing, but looking 
down into my face with some kind of a smile 
—I didn’t know—how could 1?—whether it 
was affectionate, derisive, or what, for I did 
not look at him. How beautiful he was!— 
with the red fires of the sunset burning in the 
depths of his eyes. Do you know, dear, if 
the Thugs and Experts of the Blavatsky re- 
gion have any special kind of eyes? Ah, 
you should have seen his superb attitude, the 
godlike inclination of kis head as he stood 
over me after I had got upon my feet! It 
was a noble picture, but I soon destroyed it, 
for I began at once to sink again to the earth. 
There was only one thing for him to do, and 
he did it; he supported me with an arm about 
my waist. 

‘*Miss Dement, are you ill?’’ he said. 

It was not an exclamation; there was neither 
alarm nor solicitude in it. If he had added: 
‘**T suppose that is about what I am expected 
to say,’’ he would hardly have expressed his 
sense of the situation more clearly. His man- 
ner filled me with shame and indignation, for 
I was suffering acutely. I wrenched my hand 
out of his, grasped the arm supporting me, 
and pushing myself free, fell plump into_the 


298 AN HEIRESS FROM REDHORSE. 


sand and sat helpless. My hat had fallen off 
in the struggle, and my hair tumbled about my 
face and shoulders in the most mortifying 
way.. 

‘Go away from me,’’ I cried, half chok- 
ing. ‘‘O, please go away, you—you Thug! 
How dare you think ¢hat when my leg is 
asleep?”’ 

I actually said those identical words! And 
then I broke down and sobbed. Irene, I 
blubbered! 

His manner altered in an instant—I could 
see that much through my fingers and hair. 
He dropped on one knee beside me, parted 
the tangle of hair, and said, in the tender- 
est way: ‘‘ My poor girl, God knows I have 
not intended to pain you. How should I?— 
I who love you—I who have loved you for— 
for years and years!”’ 

He had pulled my wet hands away from 
my face and was covering them with kisses. 
My cheeks were like two coals, my whole 
face was flaming, and, I think, steaming. 
What could I do? I hid it on his shoulder— 
there was no other place. And, O my dear 
friend, how my leg tingled and thrilled, and 
how I wanted to kick! 

We sat so for a long time, He had re- 


AN HEIRESS FROM REDHORSE. 299 


leased one of my hands to pass his arm about 
me again, and I possessed myself of my 
handkerchief and was drying my eyes and 
my nose. I would not look up until that 
was done; he tried in vain to push me a little 
away and gaze into my eyes. Presently, 
when it was all right, and it had grown a bit 
dark, I lifted my head, looked him straight 
in the eyes, and smiled my best—my level 
best, dear. 

** What do you mean,” I said, ‘“‘by ‘years 
and years’?’’ 

‘‘Dearest,’’ he replied, very gravely, very 
earnestly, ‘‘in the absence of the sunken 
cheeks, the hollow eyes, the lank hair, the 
slouching gait, the rags, dirt, and youth, can 
you not—will you not understand? Gunny, 
I’m Dumps!”’ 

In a moment I was upon my feet and i.e 
upon his. I seized him by the lapels of his 
coat and peered into his handsome face in the 
deepening darkness. I was breathless with 
excitement. 

** And you are not dead?’’ I asked, hardly 
knowing what I said. 

“Only dead in love, dear. I recovered 
from the road agent’s bullet, but this, I fear, 
is fatal.’’ 


300 AN HEIRESS FROM REDHORSE: 


‘‘But about Jack—Mr. Raynor? Don’t 
you know—’”’ 

‘‘T am ashamed to say, darling, that it 
ywas through that unworthy person’s invita- 
‘tion that I came here from Vienna.” 

Irene, they have played it upon your af- 
fectionate friend, 
| MAryY JANE DEMENT. 

P. S.—The worst of it is that there is no 
mystery. That was an invention of Jack to 
arouse my curiosity and interest. James is 
not a Thug. He solemnly assures me that in 
all his wanderings he has never set foot in Se- 


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